«Who wants a stylus?», from mobile phones to e-readers here is the revenge of the nib
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During one of his famous keynotes in 2007, Steve Jobs dismissed the subject of the digital pen with a peremptory “Who wants a stylus?”. It was the time of the first iPhone with a capacitive multitouch display, i.e. capable of receiving input from more than one touch on the screen at the same time, unlike the competitors of the time who were stuck on single touch. The nib, for Jobs, was not needed. In 2015, even Apple had to capitulate to the charm of the inkless ballpoint pen, with the arrival of the Pencil to support the iPad Pro. From a denigrated accessory to a revisitation of a classic for ever-connected generations, the nib was an object on which some company has always bet, for example Samsung, and that others have only recently discovered, such as Amazon which brought it on board the Kindle Scribe, the first ebook reader of the e-commerce giant which also acts as a notebook.
Samsung itself had bet on it well before the S Pen when, in 2008, it added the stylus to the Omnia smartphone, with the Windows Mobile operating system and devoted to business use. The story hasn’t changed over time, with the successful Galaxy Note series, which made the nib a distinctive brand, and the declination of the S Pen throughout the Korean chaebol mobile ecosystem, from tablets to notebooks. And we are in the present day: after saying goodbye to the Notes, Samsung could not leave the fans without the digital pen, integrating it first in the Ultra versions of the Galaxy S22 and then of the Galaxy S23, a different name to define those which, in fact, are the successors of the Notes. Moreover, Samsung has cleared the use of the stylus on a folding smartphone, the Z Fold 3 and then 4, thus expanding the methods of interaction.
The novelty at Amazon is Kindle Scribe, available from the end of December and with the help of a stylus, in double capacity. There is the basic pen and the premium one, which is also equipped with an upper rubber, almost like a real pencil, with which to “erase” the notes taken. Here the possibilities for creativity are limited by the presence of a screen which is not in color but which, according to Kindle tradition, is built specifically to be friendly to the eye, last for weeks and allow reading and writing even in low light, thanks to its backlighting. In addition to the notebooks themselves, the pen comes in handy for jotting down notes on books you’re reading or PDF files sent from other devices, with the Kindle app. It must be said that Amazon hasn’t invented anything: other companies had already embraced the idea of the super-thin tablet for some time, good for replacing diaries and notebooks. Among these Remarkable, which has founded its success on a solid social campaign. Hardware that pushes services: while Amazon relies on subscription plans to access free titles every month, Remarkable asks for a monthly plan to synchronize content between devices and use extra features.
Over the years, the explosion of pens accompanying various technological objects has been concrete. The aforementioned iPad and Galaxy Tab but also the Microsoft Surface, the iterations of Huawei’s Matepad and Wacom’s vertical proposals. Different brands that have given life to their own ideas for ballpoint pens, different in shape and colour, but identical in knowing how to give people back all the energy that a blank sheet can convey. Even if only made of bits.
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