Samsung Galaxy Note 8: Proof the pen is mightier?

I like to make statements...

...and end them with question marks?

Expensive? Same for the article - "The only slight fly in the ointment being that the iPad is cheaper"

What do we hear when an Apple device costs three times the price, but may (or may not) be slightly better? "Well I'm willing to pay for something better, it's not my fault if you're too poor". Yet, when it's another device that is the best tablet, but costs more, you're first in line to complain that it's more expensive.

If one wants lower cost, there are plenty of tablets that do better value than a Note 8 and especially an ipad mini (which has specs like resolution and RAM more in line with budget Android tablets). But there's a place for a high end device too. Yes, Apple may have a better device out in 6 months, but then a better Note 8 will be along 6 months after that too.

The biggest concern may be that the resolution may seem outdated compared to Full HD tablets likely to appear soon (with Nexus 7 rumours for July - then again, we've been waiting on rumours for ages). Apparently this is a limitation of the pen technology. But then this can't be an issue with everyone, after all people are happy to pay high prices for the lower res ipad mini.

I'd have to disagree. A stylus is infinitely more precise if you have to sketch something on a screen.

Stylus, gimmick?

If it's a proper pressure sensitive graphics-tablet type pen, it's far from a gimmick. Those things are damned useful for doing anything more complex than the Windows 8 finger-painting advert.

Now if Adobe's Android apps will recognise that stylus and act accordingly, that could be a winner for the arty crowd that would normally go for more fruity devices.

If it was *just* a stylus I'd agree, but it's a wacom digitiser as well. Very, VERY handy for someone like me who likes to sit about and doodle in the off-times. You can also use most older wacom pens with it (the one for my old cintiq works perfectly).

Incidentally, recommended app for anyone with a Note: Layer Paint. It's a relatively simple but practical art program, very cheap and better than any of the alternatives I've tried up to now. Far better brush engine than Sketchbook Pro, you aren't limited in your canvas size and naturally it works with the pressure-sensitivity of the digitiser as well.

Samsung (and another tablet that has a digitiser) are so far ahead of Apple on this that it's almost laughable when the fanbois try to belittle a feature like this. Of course it's a "step backwards" to have a superior additional interface!

Rubbish. Adding a stylus as a *mandatory* input device to a tablet would be a step back, this is just an add-on.

What was the problem with the stylus on the old PDAs? simple, the UI design of the old OSes (UIQ, WinMo PalmOS) was designed with the stylus in mind. So buttons, icons and menus were small and not usable with your fingers.

By throwing away the stylus it forced the interface and application designers to ensure that their interfaces worked well with finger input. It meant that buttons had to be easily clickable with a finger and thanks to multi-touch we could dispense with zoom buttons and other rubbish.

Adding a stylus to a phone or tablet as an optional input device is not going to undo all of the above improvements.

Only a gimmick

until Apple copy it, and then it's essential...

The Note 8 is quite clearly another entry into the impressive array of Android devices.

A stylus is a gimic if you consider a pen a gimic when finger paint works just as well.

Because of a stylus I can be pretty much paperless at work as I use a Galaxy Note phone with Lecture Notes software at (many many) meetings and then export to Evernote which does the handwriting recognition. Soft copy documents can be emailed straight into evernote. Hard copy as PDFs via CamScanner. Using the stylus I can easily annotate any PDF being reviewed via exPDFReader. I have never bothered with any of Samung's on-phone handwriting recognition or any of their apps for that matter.

This method works for me and may not work for anyone else but the precision delivered by a stylus cannot be matched by anything else and so enables workflows where a real pen can be mimicked, supplemented or even replaced.

The stylus isn't required though. It's great when you're taking notes in a meeting (straight in google keep or whatever). It's not required to use the tablet, we're not all sat stabbing our Notes with the stylus unless in an app or environment where it makes sense. It's an added feature which you're free to use / not use. You comparing it to older tablets with stylus does indeed suggest you've not used one. It's not required for navigation etc.

If you think the stylus is a gimmick, conveniently enough for you they offer a full range of devices without it.

I also don't people making the price comparison with the iPad mini, Other than size the samsung is the superior device specs-wise. Of course a device with inferior specs is cheaper. Apply don't DO an equivalent sized tablet of an equivalent spec. Just an equivalent sized tablet.

The title is too long.

I'm wondering if it has GLONASS as well?

Nice to get quick satellite fixes by using the first available satellite network, instead of standing around scratching your arse while the tower location method tries to tell you you're somewhere in a mile-or-more-wide ginormous blue circle centred on a phone mast.

Re: Once again.....

I'm almost certain my next tablet will have a stylus. Possibly a keyboard cover type thing as well. But actually although I use my Logitech Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad reasonably often, it's having a stylus that I miss - at times when using a keyboard is still inconvenient. I'm sitting on the sofa, and want to knock out 2 paragraphs of text. The onscreen keyboard is frustrating, I don't want to get up, fetch the physical one, then have to go to a table to use it. Fumbling round trying to do cut+paste would also be a whole lot easier with pen in hand.

So if Apple won't give me one, I think I'm jumping ship. Sadly Samsung being the only real stylusey game in town, they're charging a nice fat premium for them. Hopefully some nice rivals will knock the profits down a bit. Also making them more common would get more apps working with them too.

At the price of this, I could almost get an HP Atom based full-fat Win 8 tablet. Although I haven't checked to see if that has a digitiser, or if only the expensive Win 8 tablets have those. Hopefully the increased tablet competition will have someone building what I want for cheaper than the £600 you need for the 64GB iPad.