The smart phablet Galaxy Note 4 with the S Pen was able to bypass the popularity of its "brothers" from the Note line. Frankly, this device has exactly the functionality that we expected from Note series devices, plus a few new features. The settings and tips below will help you get the most out of the S Pen on your Galaxy Note 4.

Basically, the S Pen can do everything that your finger can do when navigating the display of this phablet, including working with applications and composing messages and emails. However, the stylus is not limited to the shortcomings of our frail human bodies. When you pull it out of its slot, you may notice not only its sensitive rubber tip, but also its clickable button. We certainly don't see such things on our fingers.

The functional stylus tip and button are central to the highly advanced features of this device, but let's not forget about induction technology. The weak magnetic field emitted by the Note 4 fuels the S Pen with power, and this field makes this stylus more precise and more sophisticated than a conventional passive capacitive stylus.

S Pen settings

The first step to getting the most out of your stylus is setting it right. Finding them is easy enough: you just need to go to the "Settings" menu and find the S Pen subsection there. We'll discuss some of the basic settings later in this article, but for now, here's a quick list of how certain options affect the use of your pen.

• Pointer - serves to display or not display a visible pointer on the display when using the stylus;
• Direct Pen Input - when enabled, allows the stylus to make handwriting input;
• Disable stylus detection - disable stylus detection during storage and removal to save battery power;
• S Pen sounds — enable or disable beeps when you attach or remove the stylus from the slot.
• S Pen Vibration Response - enable / disable the haptic (vibration) response when using the stylus;
• Split Options - choose whether to launch the Action Memo, Air Command (or none of them) when removing the pen from the nest;
• Add / remove sound - select a sound signal when inserting / removing the S Pen (the "S Pen Sounds" option must be enabled);
• Add / remove vibration - toggle the tactile response when removing or replacing the stylus in the phablet socket;

Again, the above settings do not cover all the options in the S Pen settings submenu. So it's time to talk about a few key features of an electronic pen.

Never lose your stylus

The S Pen can be conveniently stored right in the Galaxy Note 4's body, but the stylus itself is quite compact and easy to lose. To avoid such a situation, you need to check the "S Pen alert" item in the stylus settings.

When you turn on the alert, your phablet will notify you in case you left the stylus somewhere and began to leave without it. In our opinion, this function must be enabled - it will save you a headache if you have to look for a replacement for a stylus you lost somewhere on the road.

Air View

Air View can be called the main function of the S Pen. If Air View isn't available, you won't be able to take advantage of what makes the Note 4 and its electronic pen virtually unique. You can enable this feature in the S Pen settings.

Air View takes advantage of magnetic induction technology, which acts as a battery for the stylus and allows the phablet to track the cursor and stylus actions without touching the display. If you have Air View and S Pen enabled, you can quickly demonstrate this by holding the pen a few millimeters above the display and making a circular motion. The pointer on the screen will follow the tip of the stylus even if it is not touching the screen.

One of the applications of the Air View function is the SMS category: if you hover the tip of the stylus over an open message, you can see its full text. Other features will be discussed later in our article.

Air command

Air Command provides quick access to common functions that are available with the stylus. You can also enable Air Command through the S Pen settings. This option can be accessed from any window by bringing the stylus to the display and pressing the button on its body.

4 options included with Air Command:

Action Memo

This option allows you to open a Memo Pad to enter small notes and information such as phone numbers, email addresses, and web addresses. Pressing an active button (dotted circle with an arrow) allows the written text to activate certain actions, for example, a phone call or a transition to a website. You can also easily pin this memo pad to your home screen by clicking on the corresponding icon.

Smart Select

This option allows you to quickly select any fragment of the screen and save it as a picture in the clipboard for sharing or saving to a digital photo album. To do this, circle the desired area of \u200b\u200bthe screen with a stylus in the form of a square. You can collect multiple images by clicking the Collect button and using Smart Select again to select and capture another image.

Image Clip

Image Clip is somewhat similar to the previous option. With it, you can select a more detailed area of \u200b\u200bthe screen using the S Pen. You can also choose a specific shape of the plot outline, for example, a circle or a square. The cut images can be stored in your digital photo album, where relevant information can be added to them.

Screen Write

This option allows you to take a screenshot of the entire screen and immediately add the appropriate annotations. You have several options for changing the style and color of stylus input, which gives you the ability to write various labels on images copied from the Internet, as well as perform other actions.

Using the S Pen to surf the web

The stylus in question works quite functionally with many applications from Samsung, for example, with a browser. Using a stylus to surf the web makes it easy to scroll through web pages or copy and paste text for sharing.

Scrolling website pages

To scroll a web page with the stylus, bring it up to the screen and move it to the top or bottom edge to scroll the page up or down, respectively. A small arrow will appear to show the direction of scrolling. You will probably need to hold the tip of the stylus at the edge of the screen for a second or two for the device to accept a scroll request.

Selecting text on a web page

Managing saved photos

The S Pen also has some features to easily manage your Note 4's image gallery. With them, you can preview, select and share photos.

Aiming the stylus at shortcuts

You can quickly preview images in your gallery by hovering over them with your stylus. When the preview appears, you have access to quick shortcuts for sharing and editing. You can even call the Screen Writer function to open an image and quickly write on it.

Multi-selection in the "Gallery" section

To select multiple images in the gallery at the same time, press and hold the button on the stylus and move the tip of the stylus across the screen to draw a rectangle around the selected images. You can also add more images by repeating the above steps. You will be able to quickly share selected images, delete them, or apply other functions to them.

S Note

The S Pen stylus can show its professionalism in all its glory in an application such as S Note. This app includes many options for customizing the appearance of your pen's input, and takes full advantage of the sensitive pressure of the stylus to give your scribbles beautiful curls. If you make your own stylus settings, you can keep them preset for quick recall.

Editing text from photos

Using the S Note application, you can take a photo of a page with text, and then use the stylus to convert such a photo into an editable one. Note that the pen is good at recognizing texts, but if you need to edit several of these photos, then it will not be an easy job. It might be more useful to use S Pen settings, such as a highlighter to highlight important information and write notes.

Handwritten keyboard

In many text fields throughout the Note 4's interface, users can use the stylus to enter handwritten characters. When you turn on the Direct Input option in the menu settings, when you hover the stylus over the text field, look for the 'T' icon with a pen. Click on it to activate the handwriting keyboard, which will help you convert your handwriting to digital for use in email, SMS, and even to go online.

Copy text to memo

When you have entered text in the form field, find the above icon again. When you click on it, the printed text will be converted to fake handwritten text, and such text will be saved as an editable memo.

The first years at school we learn to write, diligently fill in the copybooks, look at notebooks in calligraphy lessons, form handwriting. Volumes of scientific papers describe how complex this process is and how it relates to the brain. Information written by hand is remembered better than any text that we type on the keyboard, the second one may not be remembered at all. Handwriting is more difficult than typing, and it is a deliberate act, a person's choice. The advent of smartphones and their proliferation should have brought the manufacturers of pens and notebooks to their knees, but they feel great since many people do not consider the smartphone a worthy replacement for the notebook. And this is easy to explain, since when we write, we do it for important things, information that we want to remember and / or think about.

Samsung's Galaxy Note line of smartphones is unparalleled as it unites two worlds in a casual manner - digital and analog. For example, you can look at the Samsung Galaxy Note8 as a state-of-the-art smartphone that has everything you'd expect from a flagship - a huge screen, great dual cameras, water resistance, plenty of memory and a fast processor that makes it easy to use.

Or you can look at the Galaxy Note8 as a modern digital notebook, which is as close as possible to ordinary paper notebooks, but has all the advantages of digital devices. You can send your recordings, store them on your computer or in the cloud, plus transfer them from smartphone to smartphone from year to year. At the same time, the S Pen not only looks like a pen, it behaves exactly the same, has different degrees of pressure, and you can not only write, but also draw. For those who have tried the S Pen once and tried how convenient it is, other smartphones seem not too advanced and they all the time lack a stylus. And someone in absentia thinks that this is pampering. Let's take a look at an example of real-life scenarios, how convenient the S Pen is, what it does, and why many people can't refuse it.

In everyday life, from time to time there are situations when I need to write down someone's number or some information, for example, the doctor tells how many times a day to drip into the child's eyes and in what sequence. On the Galaxy Note8, I just need to press the stylus to start writing even on the locked screen, and I can have a hundred such screens, if I suddenly need a treatise. My experience says that treatises are not needed, but that you need to write down at most a couple of sentences, a phone number, and this is very convenient.

Information on the run, when typing on the keyboard is not so convenient, but writing it down by hand is quite possible. These are quick notes that you can put on the screen in standby mode, see a reminder like a leaf that you attached to the refrigerator. After the specified time, they will disappear and remain in the notebook among other entries.

The analogy with a notebook is complete, Galaxy Note8 acts as a modern digital notebook, and you can store various notes in it. For example, when the screen is unlocked, you eject the S Pen, and a context menu appears in front of you, from which you can choose the actions you need now. Due to my work, I often need to take screenshots of pages, highlight information on them. With the S Pen it is much easier and faster, as well as cutting pictures as accurately as possible, since you do not need to do it with your finger, as on most other devices. But for the S Pen there is also a unique feature that is absent in other devices, it is text recognition in a photo or screenshot. You select part of the image, and the smartphone itself recognizes the text on it. Conveniently? Not that word. For example, I often need to use information about store promotions in my articles. Previously, you had to open a photo and scrupulously type text, with the Galaxy Note it is enough to select the desired area, and text in any language is recognized, you can immediately copy it to mail, a text editor, or anywhere.

This is not just a time saver, but a convenient function that allows you to work with information in a completely different way. In notes, you can draw, write, do whatever. For creative people, the "notebook" from Samsung has no alternatives, only on the Galaxy Note you can draw so comfortably, mix colors, and draw individual parts of the picture. And immediately share your creativity with tens of thousands of people around the world who can appreciate your artistic talents. When you look at drawings made on the Galaxy Note, there is no feeling that they were not drawn on paper, and then transferred to an electronic file. Moreover, people are surprised that such things can be done on a smartphone.

I have always kindly envied people who can draw, as this wisdom was not given to me. Not so long ago, the world was captured by a new fashion for coloring books for adults, when you buy a book with templates and slowly paint them in whatever colors you choose. The Galaxy Note has the exact same coloring pages, and you can also share your results with other people. This is a good activity to calm your nerves, and you are drawn into it instantly and you never let go of your smartphone.

For those who are not fluent in foreign languages, the S Pen allows you to highlight a word or part of the text in order to get a translation immediately. Many Android smartphones can do this, the difference is that with the S Pen you select text faster and easier, and the translation appears instantly. Conveniently? Certainly.

For those looking to go a little further, there is the option to replace the standard keyboard with handwriting and write the old fashioned way anywhere, in any application on the phone. This may seem a little old-fashioned to most, but the nice thing is that your text is immediately recognized and the smartphone does it well.

And for fans of animated messages there are “live messages”, they allow you to decorate what you write and send to another person on any phone as an animation. It is possible that a heart that glows and appears after the stylus will melt someone's heart.

These are just some of the possibilities the S Pen offers, and no one is forcing you to use the stylus. This is an additional tool in the Galaxy Note8, which comes to the court due to the fact that the device was made as similar as possible to ordinary notebooks, and writing with such a "pen" is a pleasure, feeling every press, being able to draw both simple schemes and complex watercolors. There is not a single device on the market that would allow you to expand the traditional capabilities of a smartphone so, in this aspect the Galaxy Note8 is unique, and the second question is how ready you are to use the S Pen. To understand this, you need to try, and for this you need to go to a Samsung store and twirl the device in your hands. It is advisable to do this thoughtfully and not on the run, imagine how you can use the S Pen in your life. And finally, I suggest watching a video, which tells in detail about all the functions that you just read about.

“The best stylus is your own finger,” Steve Jobs said, and he was damn right for at least 8 years to come. To control a smartphone with a large sensitive display and a smart mobile system, the stylus is completely useless. But there is a nuance in the framework of which first Windows tablets fit into, then Samsung Note series devices, and then an ambitious one. If you have to handwritten notes, draw or sketch on the go, your finger is no longer a good tool. The phalanx is too coarse to match the fine nib and adjustable pressure. As a phoenix from the ashes, the ashamed stylus is reborn, and comes into play.

S Pen stylus in Galaxy Note 5 Gold

There is hardly any need for more arguments in favor of the presence of such an accessory, if we are talking about specialized devices tailored for certain scenarios. A mass flagship product is another matter. Naturally, I'm talking about Samsung's Note. These daring gadgets shifted the vector of development of phones towards phablets and today are rightfully considered the most advanced “stylus smartphones”. But for all my geekiness, Note did not work out. Even with the Note 2 for a short time, I didn't give the S Pen any significant attention. After all, not an artist or a designer, my craft is text, and my tool is a keyboard. I used it actively on my laptop, typing notes and longreads literally on the go. The stylus, meanwhile, remained in the slot.

Galaxy Note 5 Lock Screen Note

Since then, I've heard rave reviews from Western journalists about the S Pen in Note devices. Some did not even imagine how a power user could choose a smartphone (a pocket branch of a laptop) without a pen. And I decided to accustom myself to the stylus, especially since my conquest of Android continued. So for a month I had a gold Samsung Galaxy Note 5 in my pocket.

I will not pay much attention to the filling and exterior of the smartphone, I told and showed all the most important things to. The Note 5 is a mirrored copy of it in a slightly different design, with QuadHD pixel frenzy in a boring (ha ha!) Flat display and also without memory card support and a replaceable battery. Emotion aside, the Note 5 is better than the Edge +. It's more grippy, it's really possible to use it with one hand and ... it has a stylus in the end. But emotionally, smarts are very different. "Edge" is perky and ambiguous, delightful or irritating - no half-measures. The Note 5, on the other hand, is solid and uncompromising. But he lacks peppercorns.

Leaving emotions behind, I will say that the main feature of the Note 5 is in the stylus. It hides in the bottom end and is locked with a spring mechanism. There are no questions about constipation - you cannot accidentally press the button, and if this happens, the accessory will not fall out of the cramped tunnel. But the perfectionist in me is not happy with the design part. The stylus does not fit flush with the plane of the end face and sticks out carelessly. Not elegant at all.

I scolded, now I will praise the Koreans for the necessary system to prevent the loss of the stylus. If you leave the accessory on the table and go about business with your smartphone in your pocket-hand, the device vibrates and displays a warning on the screen.

What the stylus is capable of in the Galaxy Note 5

The Samsung S Pen, a Wacom masterpiece with 2048-degree pressure sensing

Smoothly getting to the point - what is the S Pen capable of as the best smartphone stylus? An innovation of the Note 5, which has never been seen before in either the series or other devices with a pen, is the ability to take out the stylus and immediately start writing on the display. Suitable for noting ideas, sketches, mindmaps and banal phone numbers. You click a button, pull out the pen, and paint on a black display with white. There are no brushes in this mode, but there is a smart eraser (erases strokes, not areas of the image), as well as the obligatory save and delete buttons.

Armed with a stylus at any time you use your smartphone, you activate the context command menu. It contains several actions: creating a note, taking a screenshot of the screen or taking a screenshot of an area with subsequent marks, and also launching applications selected by the user.

An active note is a virtual hypostasis of a notebook or rather even a piece of paper. The pen behaves like a fine-tipped felt-tip pen, you can choose the color. Again, there is a magic eraser, eliminating the need to cross out or purposefully erase errors, and from the new one - changing the background color, recognizing what has been written, setting a reminder and the ability to collapse a note into an icon hanging over the open application. It is interesting that the “leaf” itself is easily reduced in size and moved around the screen. With a 5.7-inch diagonal display of the Note 5, the working area is enough to work with, for example, Google Sheets and take notes by hand. Or just write down a sensible little thought while walking around the Internet. Without exaggeration, there are a lot of scenarios.

Working with screenshots of the screen or area (there are different modes of capturing a picture, up to the similarity of Magic Wand from PS) is no less interesting. In edit mode, there are six types of brushes with adjustable thickness and color; those who like to do everything will definitely appreciate the eyedropper. The eraser can now work in smart or normal mode. In my experiments, it was this feature of the S Pen that turned out to be most useful - it provided drafts of the authors with recommendations and highlighted errors.

The Note 5 also has a notebook with an eye on handwritten notes S Note, but I will not describe its functionality. A good application, without reservations, but the user of the device may well choose something more specific - for design, engineering, drawing and other tasks.

It is worth concretizing the question: is a stylus in a smartphone necessary for a person whose occupation is not related to handwritten notes and sketches? As for me, more likely no than yes.

For a month I have been imagining scenarios for using the stylus. A couple of times I wrote down the phone numbers on the lockscreen, but I could not recognize them normally - I write like a chicken with a paw, and the system loses some of the numbers. It would be normal handwriting, the thing would be very useful, but it would be wiser for me to spend an extra minute and immediately create a new contact. I did not take notes by hand in a notebook, although I have been carrying it with me for more than one year, with the appearance of Note 5 nothing has changed. Again, the problem of handwriting and lack of writing practice. And the buzz of noting wisdom in the moleskin with a parker pen is not here. Screenshots are very good, but it's hardly worth choosing a pen device just for the sake of them.

The stylus in Note 5 is not in the least obligatory, you don't have to use it at all. The accessory settles in the tunnel and pretends to be only a slightly protruding hat, which you stop paying attention to during the second use. And this is the right approach. The Note series has historically crowned the Samsung smartphone business - the ultimate devices based on the most powerful hardware and with all the technologies available to the company. Nothing has changed today. And the stylus ... is a nice bonus for some and a good reason for a relatively small group of professionals. This is perhaps the most honest answer.

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The S Pen makes apps easier and more convenient. The possibilities offered by the stylus for the Note S will be discussed below.

1. Quick commands.

This is one of those S Pen features that most people overlook for a long time. But it is incredibly useful - it allows you to launch any application with one stroke of the pen. All you need is to hold down the button on the stylus, then swipe the screen from bottom to top. At the same time, a quick command window appears on the screen. The required application will be launched by you when you draw a symbol on the screen that you have predefined.

2. Optical letter recognition.

The OCR function will make you forget about the virtual keyboard. And if you suddenly need to write a text message, send a letter or find something on the global network - take a stylus, and at that moment your keyboard will become a window for writing. OCR perfectly recognizes characters, although we have not tested this feature with a doctor.

3. Stylus keeper.

The S Pen is useful, but losing it is as easy as using it. Samsung has developed S Pen Keeper, a program that will not let you, for example, go far from the stylus. The gadget itself informs you that the stylus is missing in the phone. It is easy to check it - put the stylus separately from the phone and move away, then you will hear the alert.

4. Draw with the S Pen.

The S Pen stylus opens up new horizons for creative people and children. S Note has a great Idea Sketch feature. It makes it possible to add sketches of objects by name - ideal for teaching kids or for fun.

5. Screengrabs.

The stylus allows you to make screengrabs, and it's amazingly easy. Hold the button on the S Pen and draw any area. Immediately after that, everything that was in the selected area will be saved as a screenrub.