With the Galaxy Note 20 being announced today, Samsung also touted some changes for the S Pen, which is included with the device.
Samsung is adding some new gestures for Air Actions – which it first debuted two years ago. Making Air Actions even more useful than ever before.
These features are going to be available on the S Pen for the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Tab S7 series of devices. While the S Pens are different (it’s larger on the Galaxy Tab S7 than on the Note 20), they offer the same tech and features.
New gestures for Air Actions
Samsung is bringing five new gestures for Air Actions. Which will allow you to do things like going back, going home, opening recents and more.
The addition of these gestures make it so that you are able to essentially control your smartphone remotely, with the S Pen.
From what we can tell, with the demos that Samsung has shown us, the gestures with the S Pen work really well, almost instantaneous. Of course, that might not be the case when the Galaxy Note 20 is actually in users (and reviewers hands).
Gestures have been available for the S Pen and the Galaxy Note series already, but now they are being expanded and will work with more apps. Making it a lot more useful.
Reduced latency for an even better writing and drawing experience
The other big change for the S Pen is the reduced latency. It’s a 40% improvement over the previous S Pen.
The latency was 42ms, and now with the new S Pen, it is just 9ms. That is the same latency as the Apple Pencil, which many on the iOS side of the world call the “gold standard”. So that’s good to see.
What this means is that when you are writing or drawing on your Galaxy Note 20 (or Galaxy Tab S7), it’ll be almost instant. This is particularly important for drawing, as you could see a lag with the previous S Pen, but that won’t be the case this time around.
This is really great, especially with the new features for Samsung Notes that the company also announced today. Where you can use auto-sync across your PC, tablet and smartphone. Making Samsung Notes a whole lot better for taking notes. It’ll also work great with the new DeX features that Samsung announced today.