Jan. 26, 2013

Prediction: within 3 years the stylus will be the killer feature of Android tablets.

I'm talking about true stylus input via induction, not those capacitive styluses you can buy for the current crop of tablets.

HTC Flyer, Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet, Asus Eee Pad MeMo, and Samsung Galaxy Note are at the forefront of this wave of hybrid capacitive + inductive (e.g. finger + stylus input in separate channels) Android tablets.

Pretty soon we'll all be wondering how we managed on tablets that only had capacitive/finger input.

Note: the most cutting edge versions of Android support full stylus support. Maybe this will be one of the rare times Android beats iOS to a killer feature.

I've long anticipated a logographic / hand drawn social network or micro-blogging platform where status updates come in the form of sketches. Maybe the upcoming stylus ubiquity will bring it about?