Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Pressure sensitivity, Galaxy Note 10.1

I was just talking a couple of days ago with my old artist friend Umbra (our read Ganesha Games) about pressure sensitivity on tablets. We ended up not being very optimistic about seeing it soon.
But lo and behold: Samsung has announced that the upcoming Galaxy Note (not Tab) 10.1 will include Wacom's pressure sensitivity technology!



I honestly don't know if it means anything to the average user, but for artists this might be a big deal, if it works well for a reasonable price. Wacom's screen tablets are wonderful but costly, and have to be plugged into a computer with monitor connection and USB, making them quite clumsy.

Admittedly we also need good art software which works with that pressure sensitivity, let's hope that comes. (It's Android of course.)

The Note 10.1 will also support side-by-side apps, for apps optimised for it.

4 comments:

Stephen A said...

Of course I had a full Wacom pressure sensitivity and capability on my Fujitsu Stylistic tablet. And that was years before Jobs personally invented the tablet! Then he went on to declare:
“As soon as you have a stylus, you're dead,”

For any content creation (both technical and artistic) a Wacom stylus is essential. It's 85% of the way to the portable Cintiq pad of my dreams. And keep in mind that ICS has stylus support built in from the bottom up. As for apps they will come soon enough.

This is the real reason I'm always down on Apple, the "one true way" mentality often degenerates to a one size fits all result. Features which are essential to a minority of users (styli, keyboards, etc.) are left out.

Frankly, I want much more. I want a smart multimode stylus which runs on multiple tablets and displays. One could have a small tablet with tools, layers and palette on it, and a larger tablet or Cintiq with the fullscreen picture one is working with. Rather than having to switch modes or have a sidebar cover precious workspace you simply lift your stylus from the image and move over to the small tablet, tap the needed tool or color and go back to the big tablet. Just like a physical artists palette functions. With just a bit of existing technology such a stylus could function with a huge smartboard.

We keep reinventing the wheel, and settling for so little because we forget the past and lack a overall worldview for ubiquitous computing.

Stephen A said...

Case in point:
Pen and touch

Strangely, it was a faction of Microsoft that was focused on the tablet as a content creation device as opposed to the content consumption focus of Apple.

Tablet and large surface

A pressure sensitive stylus is also much more multisense, in that it engages visual and haptic senses

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Stephen, thanks for the interesting comments and links.

While I love Apple's usability, I agree very much about the necessity of keeping the more advanced interfaces, and manual controls. Which I use sometimes in photography, though for most of my work, automatic works best.

Johannes Krauser II said...

short but interesting post, really useful, even the comments.
I was craving for a portable drawing tablet. Cintiq is not affordable and rather difficult, I am the type of guy who can't write or draw with paper in straight position, lol.