The S Pen has always been the differentiating factor for the Note-series from Samsung, and each year the company has tried to make the stylus a little better. With Galaxy Note 9, Samsung brought Bluetooth functionality to the S Pen, allowing users to use the stylus as a long-range shutter button.
Now, it looks like Samsung is looking forward to taking it a bit further by incorporating a camera inside of the stylus, according to a patent granted today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
According to a report from Patently Mobile, the patent, which was originally filed in February of 2017, involves an “electric pen device” with an “optical system including a lens and an image sensor”, which will allow the camera to be “controlled from the external electronic device.”
In the patent, Samsung says that smartphones typically rely on digital zoom in order to reduce the thickness of the device, even though the optical zoom offers a better quality of the final images. The patent describes a method on incorporating an optical sensor into the S Pen that would compromise of at least one lens and an image. The sensor would be controlled by an external button.
With smartphone manufacturers overhauling the design of their devices in order to achieve the maximum screen-to-body ratio, smartphones have been featuring various innovative designs and mechanisms such as the slider mechanism, pop-up camera, notched display, and punch-hole display. Nevertheless, it looks like Samsung will not resort to any of these design choices in order to provide an all screen display, especially with the Note series, since the company is planning to put a sensor in the stylus of the device. Embedding a camera in the S Pen, which is permanently attached to the device, removes the requirement of a front-facing camera and hence the requirement for notch or punch-hole.
Samsung also makes references in the patent for the future notebook and desktop displays to have a slot to house the S Pen.
Also read:
Samsung Galaxy M10, M20 ‘Sold Out’ in First Sale Today; Next Sale on Thursday via Amazon
Samsung Galaxy A-series to launch in India Soon, Will Start at ₹8,490