New Samsung tablet takes aim at dominant iPad --- with a pen
By Peter Svensson |
August 19, 2012, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE tablet-computer market is like guerrilla warfare. One huge army - Apple - dominates the land, while a ragtag group of insurgents keeps raiding and probing, hoping to find some opening it can exploit.
With Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10.1, the rebels have scored a small victory. It's a tablet that does something the iPad doesn't do, and it does it well. But this victory won't win the war.
Available in the United States last Thursday, the US$499 tablet comes with a pen, more precisely, a stylus. It doesn't mark paper but the tablet's screen responds to it. I found it a pleasure to use: It's precise and responsive, and it glides easily across the screen.
There are styluses available for the iPad, but they're not very good. The iPad's screen can't sense sharp objects, so any stylus has to be fairly blunt. Many of them have rubber tips, which resist being dragged across the screen.
The Note has an added screen layer, tuned to sense special, sharp-pointed pens through magnetism.
The Note is not the first iPad competitor to work with a stylus.
The HTC Flyer came out last year with the same ability, but several missteps limited its appeal. First, it was half the size of the iPad yet cost just as much, and that was without the pen. Second, there was no slot for the pen in the body of the tablet, making it easy to lose. The pen also was expensive, costing US$80 to replace.
Samsung then built pen-sensitivity into the first Galaxy Note, a smartphone launched early this year. Though well-received, the tablet had an odd size, with a five-inch screen. That makes it very big for smartphone but small for a tablet. With the Galaxy Note 10.1, Samsung is taking the pen squarely into iPad territory.
So what can you do with the pen? Well, this is where the Samsung offensive starts faltering. There isn't that much the pen is useful for, because stylus-equipped tablets are so new.
You can jot down notes, or edit photos in an included version of Photoshop. You can scrawl personal notes to people and e-mail them. Instead of using the on-screen keyboard, you can use handwriting and let the tablet interpret it. You can even enter web addresses this way. Handwriting is slower than typing, and the tablet's interpretation introduces errors, so it's not clear why you'd use it much.
The stylus senses how hard you press into the screen. Samsung's S Note app responds by making the line you make thinner or thicker, essential for anyone who wants to use a tablet for serious drawing. The pen also comes with a side button that works much like the left mouse button, giving access to extra features with little effort.
Very few third-party apps are designed with styluses in mind, but some of them work better with a stylus anyway. "Draw Something," a drawing game, is a good example. It's designed for use with fingers, but the stylus makes it much easier to draw intelligible pictures, because it's easier to see what you're drawing. By contrast, a finger is so big and blunt that it obscures the picture. The app would work even better if it sensed the pen pressure.
At this stage, however, the stylus is slightly better than a gimmick.
But even when there are more apps for it, the stylus is going to have limited appeal. It's a must-have for only a small group of people, who like to doodle or need to do so for their jobs. For the rest of us, it will be a fun thing we use once in a while. It can and should tip a purchase decision now and then, but not for everyone.
Contrast that with the signature feature of the latest iPad: the ultra-high resolution screen. That's not a must-have feature for everyone either, but it's immediately useful to everyone.
The Galaxy Note does chip at iPad's defenses with other features the Apple tablet lacks. One is a slot for microSD memory cards to expand the memory inexpensively. That's very welcome.
The other feature is an infra-red light, which can replace a remote at the home entertainment center. It's welcome, too - some people spend hundreds of dollars on universal remotes, which the Galaxy Note effectively replaces with this feature.
The Note runs Ice Cream Sandwich, the next-to-latest version of Android, and can be upgraded to Jelly Bean, the latest. It has a fast processor and a big screen. At US$499, it costs US$100 more than the pen-less Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, which has the same size screen but a slower processor.
With Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10.1, the rebels have scored a small victory. It's a tablet that does something the iPad doesn't do, and it does it well. But this victory won't win the war.
Available in the United States last Thursday, the US$499 tablet comes with a pen, more precisely, a stylus. It doesn't mark paper but the tablet's screen responds to it. I found it a pleasure to use: It's precise and responsive, and it glides easily across the screen.
There are styluses available for the iPad, but they're not very good. The iPad's screen can't sense sharp objects, so any stylus has to be fairly blunt. Many of them have rubber tips, which resist being dragged across the screen.
The Note has an added screen layer, tuned to sense special, sharp-pointed pens through magnetism.
The Note is not the first iPad competitor to work with a stylus.
The HTC Flyer came out last year with the same ability, but several missteps limited its appeal. First, it was half the size of the iPad yet cost just as much, and that was without the pen. Second, there was no slot for the pen in the body of the tablet, making it easy to lose. The pen also was expensive, costing US$80 to replace.
Samsung then built pen-sensitivity into the first Galaxy Note, a smartphone launched early this year. Though well-received, the tablet had an odd size, with a five-inch screen. That makes it very big for smartphone but small for a tablet. With the Galaxy Note 10.1, Samsung is taking the pen squarely into iPad territory.
So what can you do with the pen? Well, this is where the Samsung offensive starts faltering. There isn't that much the pen is useful for, because stylus-equipped tablets are so new.
You can jot down notes, or edit photos in an included version of Photoshop. You can scrawl personal notes to people and e-mail them. Instead of using the on-screen keyboard, you can use handwriting and let the tablet interpret it. You can even enter web addresses this way. Handwriting is slower than typing, and the tablet's interpretation introduces errors, so it's not clear why you'd use it much.
The stylus senses how hard you press into the screen. Samsung's S Note app responds by making the line you make thinner or thicker, essential for anyone who wants to use a tablet for serious drawing. The pen also comes with a side button that works much like the left mouse button, giving access to extra features with little effort.
Very few third-party apps are designed with styluses in mind, but some of them work better with a stylus anyway. "Draw Something," a drawing game, is a good example. It's designed for use with fingers, but the stylus makes it much easier to draw intelligible pictures, because it's easier to see what you're drawing. By contrast, a finger is so big and blunt that it obscures the picture. The app would work even better if it sensed the pen pressure.
At this stage, however, the stylus is slightly better than a gimmick.
But even when there are more apps for it, the stylus is going to have limited appeal. It's a must-have for only a small group of people, who like to doodle or need to do so for their jobs. For the rest of us, it will be a fun thing we use once in a while. It can and should tip a purchase decision now and then, but not for everyone.
Contrast that with the signature feature of the latest iPad: the ultra-high resolution screen. That's not a must-have feature for everyone either, but it's immediately useful to everyone.
The Galaxy Note does chip at iPad's defenses with other features the Apple tablet lacks. One is a slot for microSD memory cards to expand the memory inexpensively. That's very welcome.
The other feature is an infra-red light, which can replace a remote at the home entertainment center. It's welcome, too - some people spend hundreds of dollars on universal remotes, which the Galaxy Note effectively replaces with this feature.
The Note runs Ice Cream Sandwich, the next-to-latest version of Android, and can be upgraded to Jelly Bean, the latest. It has a fast processor and a big screen. At US$499, it costs US$100 more than the pen-less Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, which has the same size screen but a slower processor.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
