S pen with my Samsung Note 5

Factual Questions
1

Hello everyone,

I have a Samsung Note 5 and it comes with a small pen/ pointer thing. It can be used instead of you’re finger on the touch screen, to write and do a lot of other things I’m sure if i bothered to read the manual.

MY question is, how does it work? I know the acting as a finger part, but it has a button on the side, also when you hold it near the screen a little circle appears on the display. It doesn’t have battery or any device [f2f, Wi-Fi) to communicate with the phone. As far as I can tell its just a stick of aluminum, so how can the phone recognize it when I hold it am inch from the screen?

2

Here you go, straight from the Android Authority:

Samsung S Pen

3

It does actually have “a device that communicates with the phone” that is powered by the phone itself. That is actually pretty old computer tech–back in the early 1990s I had a Wacom tablet with a pen that worked the same way.

4

Thanks! Both links were very helpful. There’s more than meets the eye apparently with the S Pen.

5

BTW, the newest S Pen is Bluetooth. And I’m not finding a link now, but I recently saw rumors that Apple is trying to put a camera in their version of a stylus.

6

I think the Samsung S-pen is actually made by Wacom (see here for example). It’s the same technology used in Wacom-branded graphics tablets.

7

<never mind, video in the link above is better>