Samsung to fight iPad with stylus, windows

Samsung today pledged to "completely redefine mobile computing" - by bringing back the peripheral we thought was lost, the stylus.

In a bid to make writing "personal again", the company, as expected, has taken its Galaxy Note five-incher and stretched it out with a 10.1in display.

The irony here is that the stylus was long considered retro tech, a relic from an era when touchscreens weren't much cop. To be fair, Samsung has shown, with the 5in Note, that you can do interesting stuff with a stylus, but it remains to be seen whether it's a better selling point that 'not Apple'.

The lack of a stylus seem to have hindered artists like David Hockney from creating critically acclaimed works on the pen-less iPad.

Still, it's a differentiator nonetheless. But its the multiscreen feature is likely to be more widely favoured, especially by folks whose workflow requires more than one window to be open at once. Multiscreen makes the Android UI a truly windowed environment, allowing you to put have a browser open alongside the app your using to make notes on the video stream - college lecture, press conference, whatever - you're watching.

Alas the Note 10.1 only has six apps coded for this feature, including an office suite, Polaris, and email, but it's a start. From a personal productivity perspective, it puts the Note streets ahead of the iPad.

UK pricing has yet to be revealed, but the Note 10.1 will be $499 (£319 before VAT) in the US, which gets you 16GB of storage. Shame it only has a 1280 x 800 display. That's almost retina-like on the 7in Google Nexus but not here, and it may put some folk off, especially when the 2048 x 1536 iPad 3 can be had for the same price, ditto the 1920 x 1080 Asus Transformer Infinity. ®