Details have been revealed today showing that Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) will have native Stylus input available. At the moment, any support for a stylus has been added by a 3rd party such as on the Samsung Galaxy Note pictured below.
Smartphones and tablets are a lot more finger friendly than they were a few years ago. Icons have been made larger, virtual keyboards made more friendly as well as a number of other UI tweaks that allow them to be used with fingers. However, some users still like a stylus which could be used for drawing on the screen or managing information in a more familiar way. The type of stylus needed has always been the same for capacitive type screens (different to resistive screens).
Now that Android 4.0 has stylus support native to the OS, it means that manufacturers should be able to more easily utilise pen usage on smartphones and tablets. Android can be used with a pen we should mention, but without the supporting drivers and UI changes, it literally just acts as a finger would. Adding native support would bring up options specific to a pen.
Stylus input, button support, hover events
Android 4.0 includes full support for stylus input events, including tilt and distance axes, pressure, and related motion event properties. To help applications distinguish motion events from different sources, the platform adds distinct tool types for stylus, finger, mouse, and eraser. For improved input from multi-button pointing devices, the platform now provides distinct primary, secondary, and tertiary buttons, as well as back and forward buttons. Hover-enter and hover-exit events are also added, for improved navigation and accessibility. Developers can build on these new input features to add powerful interactions to their apps, such as precise drawing and gesturing, handwriting and shape recognition, improved mouse input, and others.
Source Via: NetbookNews
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.