Science Fiction World

If you like the idea of using a pen on a 10-inch tablet to jot down notes, automatically converting your handwriting into text (amongst other possibilities), you’re in luck. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung has just announced a 10.1-inch Galaxy Note tablet, a big brother to its previously released 5-inch Galaxy Note phone. The Galaxy Note also comes with a stylus pen for onscreen scribbling.

I’ve always wondered whether Apple made a mistake completely ruling out tablet stylus interaction with the iPad. They argue that humans already have all the necessary tools at their disposal to use a tablet properly: five fingers on each hand. However, if you’ve ever used a Wacom Art Tablet or prefer writing with a pen you may disagree (as I do). Try sketching a picture with your finger or performing intricate graphic design work on current tablets.

If you’re creatively inclined, this new tablet could be just the ticket. Sketch pictures, write your next novel, add entries to your diary, jot down notes - all with the added advantage that you can scribble on websites, images, PDFs and presumably electronic books too. Note taking in book margins should be a breeze. Could be especially attractive to students or workers wanting to quickly take down notes during meetings or lectures rather than having to call up the onscreen keyboard.

Of course, it looks good on paper (or on the screen) but we’ll have to see if it’s all that it's cracked up to be when we try it out in the real world (rather than the “soon to be released” world). If your handwriting is as bad as mine and the conversion fails, or if it’s not particularly accurate as a sketching, drawing device, then all bets are off. Presumably Samsung has built it with a special screen to allow for stylus interaction?

The Galaxy Note 10.1’s pre-installed software includes S Note for scrawling text, Shape Match and Formula Match (to digitise images and mathematical formulae) and even Adobe's new Photoshop Touch and Ideas apps.

Under the hood it runs a 1.4GHz dual-core processor with 1GB RAM, features a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and 16, 32 or 64GB of internal memory. Looks like it’s as light and thin as the former Samsung Galaxy 10.1 too, weighing in at 583g and measuring 256.7 x 175.3 x 8.9mm.

No word on a release date, but I’m interested Samsung so hurry up.