Gadgetory

so a couple weeks ago we took you on a guided tour of the s-pen Samsung's special stylus for the Galaxy Note family of devices well that's not the only stylus Samsung has cooked up for its smartphone family I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow comm and this is the Samsung CE pen for the galaxy s3 let's check it out so one of the most telling things about a technology product or any product really is the expectations it sets with the blurbs on the packaging the C pen according to the back of the box here offers the comfort and style of a premium writing instrument the tip of this stylist is designed to simulate a finger touch tap or swipe giving you full touch navigation functionality and allowing you to leave your touchscreen fingerprint free that is right the last point on the marketing copy is talking about how it helps keep fingerprints off your screen so you can tell right away that this is a product that's not going to blow your socks off let's go ahead and open up packaging here discard the box here is the C pen itself the second indication that you're not going to be too blown away put that aside for a second comes when you pull out this little pamphlet here and realize that it is not an instruction sheet now if you're coming into this like I did because you didn't pay attention when Samsung announced the C pen in the first place you might think there's something special that requires instruction like a battery or a button or anything but no this is just a warranty card because the C pen is simplicity itself we have a nice attractive finish here with the Samsung branding on top of this pewter pocket clip here you can see the entire unit is finished in a very dark shade it's got good weight and a good material feel in the hand but checking out the front you can see this big soft nib on the tip just gives this one away this is just Samsung's take on the same capacitive stylus as we've seen for years so how does it work well we've got our galaxy s3 here to test that out now in normal use you can see we can swipe tap and flick to our hearts content responsiveness is just as good as with finger input and the feeling of the nib on the glass display is actually very very nice there's a lot more friction than with the s-pen on the note it's a bit like dragging a felt-tip marker along a piece of glossy oak tag it's actually very very comfortable and as you can see it works well it doesn't necessarily work with every device featuring a capacitive display this is the Motorola Droid Razr m and as you can see there is positively no responsiveness on this device which I thought was interesting whether tap flick or swipe nothing going on there let's try it out with the lg optimus G just to have a little bit of fun here also no responsiveness whatsoever this is very clearly it's very easy to see why Samsung branded this as a Galaxy s3 accessory but it does work with Google's Nexus 7 so that is very interesting although I should note that it does not work terribly well with this device as you can see taps and flicks are often confused for each other so very obvious why Samsung labelled this an accessory only for the galaxy s3 so returning to the device that the s-pen was designed for we can see we've gotten our responsiveness back and we feel a whole lot better than we did on some of the other devices here but it's not all perfect if we happen to Chrome real quick will show you that the capacitive buttons flanking the home screen here do not always respond to the c-pen as a matter of fact if you tap right on them they don't respond at all you have to find the strange little edge area that will activate there we go the Menu key and that tends to move around a little bit the back key is even more finicky if that's possible we've got to find where it likes to be as you can see I am actually tapping here no response from our friend the back key menu Keys being a little bit might have gotten the back key to activate before but obviously you can see and we can just press the Menu button physically but very very annoying we complained of a similar problem with the s-pen on the Galaxy Note and ago - no - it's not a problem it's a design deficiency we suppose but it's really annoying because you have to go from a pen input here to a finger input here and then a third input methodology with this physical home button here to mash that down it's just a very disjointed and awkward experience now let's check out how the c-pen fares in note taking the galaxy s3 of course shipping with S Memo the same thing essentially as s note on the galaxy note 2 and the galaxy note hopping into S Memo we can see the default paintbrush size is too thick so let's go up here and thin it up some so maybe we can write a memo and you know actually that's not too bad it actually you know it works it's not pretty by any means but neither is my writing on the Galaxy Note 2 so that doesn't say much however the thing to note here we'll just clear all is that there's no pressure-sensitive digitizer on the sgs3 or in many phones out at all outside the note in Note 2 so there's no difference in the digital link right now I'm just as softly as I can just barely grazing the display there's that what that line looks like and then I'm just going to mash it down and draw straight across as hard as I can go as you can see there is no difference at all in the thickness of those lines because the screen has no way of knowing that you've pressed it with a different pressure level for each of those lines there's no digitizer here so that is not a surprise to anyone everyone knew that going in but it's just something that renders the note-taking features of this device a little well no not a little significantly less impressive than those on the note family and there's also nothing fancy like floating cursors or hovering or track scrubbing it's just a really really really tiny finger tip folks that's all we're talking about here finally there's just no place to put the thing obviously the galaxy s3 doesn't offer any kind of a silo and the C pen is just massive so it's obvious that Samsung wants you to carry this in your pocket like a traditional ballpoint pen or something like that which would be fine if it offered any real utility to everyday people I mean sure and certain nisha applications like for workers who need to wear gloves all day long or for those in cold climes in the same situation or for those who really really don't want a fingerprint up their displays it's useful sure but for 30 bucks or slightly less if you shop somewhere other than Samsung com you're better off spending your hard-earned money elsewhere bottom line if you're looking for a device with a stylus you're better off snapping up one that was designed from the ground up with a stylus in mind in this case getting your s-pen confused with your C pen is a recipe for disappointment that's going to do it for our special tour of the Samsung Sea pen for the galaxy s3 if you liked the video please give us a thumbs up down at the bottom there if you have a comment you want to say something back leave a comment on the post at pocketnow.com not here on youtube if you can help it follow us on twitter pocket now tweets is the official account if you want to find out when we're posting new videos follow me on twitter at captain two phones that's captain the number two phones stay tuned for a lot more editorial and video content Samsung non Samsung stylus related not stylus related everything in mobile technology we try to cover it thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one you