In the early days of Android, Samsung made many exploratory attempts, the most famous of which was the Galaxy Note series. In addition to the iconic giant screen, S-Pen is its most obvious feature. The former is also one of the reasons for the name Note, and it has gone through five generations of changes with the Note series.

In September 2011, when Android was still 2.3 and the mainstream screen size was still 3.5 inches, the original Galaxy Note came out. The 5.3 inch screen at 16:10 and the addition of S-Pen shocked the industry. The original generation of S-Pen supports the original handwriting sending and graffiti functions, and supports functions such as circle cutting screenshots.

One year later, Note2 was released, and S-Pen also ushered in a significant update. The pressure sense was upgraded to 1024, and the landmark Air View suspension preview function was introduced: S-Pen can be sensed 1-2cm above the screen, and the target point of the pen tip is displayed on the screen, which can hover in the air to complete the preview of album/video and detailed calendar. In addition, when the air view suspension preview is triggered, the screen will ignore the capacitive touch operation of the fingers, prevent the hand from mistakenly touching during writing, and greatly improve the writing experience on the touch screen.

When Galaxy Note3 was released, Samsung introduced a fan-shaped "floating window instruction" to integrate common operations such as smart memos, cut and paste, screenshot writing, and S search. The memo adds the function of transferring handwriting to text, which can change handwritten words into text that can be copied and pasted. In addition, S-Pen also has shortcut functions such as circle opening calculator and browser.

In Galaxy Note4, the pressure sensing level of S-Pen has doubled to 2048, and many improved adjustments have been made to the software UI and functions. In Galaxy Note5 released this year, the original pull-out version of the S-Pen has been changed to the pop-up version, and many quite practical functions such as screen out fast writing and scrolling screenshots have been added.

Daily mature floating window command/smart memo/S Note

On Note 5 with more metal and glass elements, the pressing cap of S-Pen has also become a metal material. The spring force and pressing feel are very close to the real ballpoint pen. It is easy to be addicted to pressing when there is nothing to do and thinking. Netizens jokingly claim that this experience can be played for a year.

The design of the pen body itself has not changed much. The painting in the same color as the body and the tail of the silver hot pen are familiar. The pen head can still be replaced. An additional 5 pen heads and replacement clips are provided with the machine. The nib is made of silica gel, which can increase the resistance of scratching on the screen and provide friction and support when writing. The actual writing experience is very smooth, but the friction is much smaller than the real writing.

After the S-Pen is pulled out, there will be vibration and prompt sound. The intelligent function interacts through three elements: "side key, stroke double click and floating window command". The application is mainly carried by the S Note.

Pull out the S-Pen or the pen tip close to the screen and click the side button to call up the floating window command. There are three preset functions: intelligent memo, intelligent multi screenshot and screenshot writing. Users can add three application shortcuts by themselves. In the past, the functions of long pressing side key screenshots and pressing side key to draw screen screenshots, which are very fast but may cause many users to misoperate, have been cancelled.

Stroke/color/size selection, and "floating notes"

Smart notes support reminder settings, can customize the background and stroke color, and can even be pasted to the desktop as a desktop plug-in. The entire page exists in a floating mode, and can be directly resized and positioned. You can take notes while watching Weibo and WeChat. If you like, you can put all the handwritten notes on the desktop in the form of "thumbnails". The convenience advantage is very obvious, but this application is biased towards speed recording and does not provide a variety of stroke choices.

Illustration stroke and coloring

Illustration touch up

While conventional S Note notes have a variety of strokes, colors, and thicknesses to choose from, and can even take color on the screen (click on the screen content to copy the color indicated by the tip of the pen). It is a versatile "graffiti and drawing" application. It is easy to draw, doodle and write with the rich pressure strokes.

Imitate the brushwork of watercolor and oil painting

Killer level function: fast writing with rest screen/intelligent multi cutting/character recognition

Note 5 has added the function of quick writing on the rest screen, which allows you to enter the minimal recording mode without any additional operation when you pull out S Note from the rest screen. This mode will ignore the touch of fingers. Only S-Pen can write, and the machine will become a real Note.

With the pure black AMOLED screen, it does not consume power. Even if it is maintained for a long time, the screen flash will not have an obvious impact on the power. It is very suitable for high-speed and long-term recording. For users who often need to record inspiration and take notes, this is absolutely a killer function.

Point to the input box and the ORC input button will pop up

Text ORC recognition: when the pen tip points to the input box, the handwriting recognition area will be displayed, and the handwritten content will be recognized directly. When making phone calls to record contacts and making simple input, you can use S-Pen to complete all operations even if you cannot or are too lazy to type.

Screenshot graffiti and scrolling screenshots

The scrolling screenshot has now become a built-in function, which can record up to 22 pages, almost all of which can be recorded in the long Weibo and long web pages. Full page screenshots can also be edited and written as usual. More violent is that the machine can recognize the text content in the screenshot and copy the content separately.

Automatic matting and screenshot text recognition

Intelligent multi screen capture can capture the screen content according to square, ellipse and arbitrary shape. In this generation, there are more functions like PS's automatic cutout and clip library. The former can automatically identify and capture the target contour, and the latter is an enhanced pasteboard, which can put multiple screenshots/cutouts together for editing/scribing.

On the left is partial magnification, on the right is table insertion and clip library

Some enhanced functions such as local zoom in and simple chart are used as optional plug-ins for users to choose. The seamless cooperation of many functions makes Note5 more convenient than ordinary mobile phones or computers when taking notes in meetings/classes.

As a continuous product of five generations, you will gradually feel that there are many design and use details under the surface of the S-Pen: the system will record the time of pulling out the S-Pen, and there will be an anti loss reminder behind the lock screen. After the pen is pulled out, the translucent floating window will always be displayed, which greatly reduces the chance of missing the pen.

In general, the S-Pen on Note5 is very handy. This experience is toxic... Its use experience has even exceeded that of surface and iPad Pro, and there is no competition in the mobile phone field. In an era when mobile phone differentiation is getting smaller and smaller, we have to say that S-Pen is an important case of differentiation. It has created a series, built a high barrier and confirmed the saying that only S-Pen can be called Note.