Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review

STYLUS

As well as being able to use the capacitive touchscreen using your fingers, as with any Android tablet, the Galaxy Note 10.1’s real trick is the stylus (called the S Pen) tucked into a slot at the rear of the tablet.

The S Pen tucks out of sight at the rear of the tablet

It would have been easy for Samsung to simple make the stylus a replacement for your finger, but it’s worked the pen into the entire operating system, making this tablet a different experience to normal.

Samsung has worked the S Pen into the entire Android operating system, but you can still use it happily with just a finger

First up is the Touchwiz interface, which gives you shortcuts to the S Note (a stylus-enabled note-taking utility), Browser, Video Player and Gallery apps: just tap and slide your finger or the S Pen up to launch the relevant app. Note that Touchwiz only works if you don’t have security, such as PIN protection, turned on.

In addition, there’s a shortcut menu that appears when you remove the S Pen from its housing or hold its button down and swipe upwards. This lets you launch stylus-enhanced applications, such as the excellent Adobe Photoshop Touch. You can’t customise this menu, although you can choose which application to auto-launch when you remove the S Pen.

Samsung has also made some tweaks to Android to make it work with the S Pen. So, hold the stylus’ button down and long-press on the screen and it takes a screenshot. Hold the button down and double-tap the screen and you get up a windowed version of S Note for taking a quick note.

S Note has handwriting, shape and formula recognition built-in, turning your scrawl into legible notes

It’s the full version of S Note where you get more control over what you’re writing, with special modes to help recognise mathematical formulas; a shapes mode to help you draw clean shapes, such as triangles and squares; and handwriting recognition.

The latter is very good, correctly identifying our scrawl and converting it into real text. Our main problem with the system is that it’s fiddly to correct mistakes and position the cursor, as you have to use the on-screen cursor keys.