BlackBerry® PlayBook™

[lstoch]

absolutely. karma restored, just no stylus

[georgekGR]

updating: i have just received my hard candy stylus and it actually works quite well, i d say it really has a reason of existence, as to it being actually useful. the money might be quite much for a stylus, at about double the price of the universal ones, but i have tried about 5 since last week and this is by far the only one i have found useful on the playbook if you really want to have a stylus. in someway the samsung galaxy compatible styli, seem to work better than the " universal ones".

i am not using a screen protector, so i do not knowhow it will run with it though.

i ve tried it with skit, sketchpad, scroodle, and sketch book for hand writing

sketchbook needs some extra pressure an cannot do dots with a simple light push so not that great but it is the app rather than screen and stylus
same goes for sketchpad, although a bit better than sketchbook

scroodle is more fluid but needs to write slowly, but i even did caligraphy with slow moves. this is due to the app i believe.
i find skit to be the best one of the above.
that said, in skit i was able to even sign but the writing speed has to be slow for accuracy.
the pressure needed is minimal, so overall the stylus works pretty well on the playbook and i was able to navigate without any problem .

writting apps though i believe have to be improved .

i do not know if anyone here knows if this has to do with the multitouch capability of the pb touchscreen or not.

istoch let me know if you want a vid, i could send one to you ( although it will only be torch quality... )
rgrds to all

[lstoch]

@georgekGR

Thanks for the detailed response. A vid would be great. Can one post one on the blog, or do you need an email address?

[georgekGR]

ok, just an additional comment, writing with the finger on skit for instance is faster and a bit more responsive than the stylus, so i guess my impression is the stylus actually looses some of the finger response in speed, but you can write much accurately with stylus, so you d have to weight the pros ang contras. i will make the vid later on today and i ll get back to you. might cloud it or mail it, or youtube it. i ll keep in touch.

[peter9477]

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georgekGR wrote:
sketchbook needs some extra pressure an cannot do dots with a simple light push so not that great but it is the app rather than screen and stylus

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Note that extra pressure is not itself what's important here.  The "poor" drawing apps don't respond until there's actually movement detected, which is why you can't just "tap".  The touch controller is absolutely registering and delivering the "tap" to the drawing app, but if it looks like a simple mouseBegin followed by a mouseEnd (those are the event names) without a mouseMove occurring in between, the "bad" apps ignore it.

Putting on extra pressure is just resulting in the touch coordinates shifting around a bit, resulting in at least one mouseMove event, which those apps need to decide to actually draw something.

You could probably get the same effect by leaning the stylus from one side to the other back and forth, while holding it in position.

A complaint to the developer of any app that won't recognize and draw a point for a simple tap is a good idea...

[georgekGR]

thanks for the input peter and for the clarifications on tapping dev. 

f

regarding pressure i mean pressure between styli as i have the impression from trying them out that different styli require different ammount of pressure to register on the screen. also, srit seems to register a tap as you comment it since it is the only one that actually allows to write a full poin with a single tap and not by horizontal movement of the stylus. 

[lstoch]

Thanks guys. What looked like a simple issue sure as heck isn't. I keep going back to my experience watching the guy using penultimate on the iPad - so simple and elegant and no pressure at all. None of these issues we've been discussing occurred.

So there appear to be three issues:

a) the pressure required on the playbook to register the movement of the various stylii
b) the sophistication of the app in registering the movement of the stylus
c) the extent to which a screen protector interferes with the screen's ability to detect the stylus' presence.

[lstoch · Accepted solution]

I have it figured now.

Background to solution:  I bought my wife the iPad, not because I think it is berrer than the PlayBook, but because she needs access to all the newspapers and magazines that are published to the iPad.

The purchase did two things:

• it made me very envious of apss such as Penultimate, Skype and Kindle which i downloaded for her for FREE
• it made me aware of how sensitive the iPad is to the touch

So, in a fir of peak I removed my screen protector (something I had been very loathe to do) and purchased Skit.  Now:

• Skit world ok with my finger - the more I practise, the better I can get it - the results are better if I write slowly
• I popped into the store again and tried the Griffin stylus and one other (I can't remember the name) - bottom line - both stylii were **bleep**.

So there you have it:

• Get rid of the screen protector if you have one - just make sure you have a PlayBook cover to protect the screen - I have a leather one that protects both back and front and also creates a stand if you want it to.
• Get Skit (or some other) tool for taking hand written notes adn use your finger - a bit of practise and you should be able to get it right.

A couple of suggestions for the guys at Skit

• At any page of the note pad, provide the ability to email that page or the entire not pad.  Its ways too much hassle to first have to output to a pdf file.
• I realise that the Skit menu remains hidden until a downward swipe in order to save on real-estate, but having to swipe each time you want to access the menu is a pain.  Provide an option to hide or show the menu.

That's it folks.

Thanks to all who contributed to this chat.

[Xandrex]

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lstoch wrote:

So, in a fir of peak I removed my screen protector (something I had been very loathe to do) and purchased Skit.  Now:

• Skit world ok with my finger - the more I practise, the better I can get it - the results are better if I write slowly
• I popped into the store again and tried the Griffin stylus and one other (I can't remember the name) - bottom line - both stylii were **bleep**.

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hello,

can you explain, I really do not understand. Do those two stylii work on the naked PlayBook or not?

[lstoch]

No they do not. You have to apply ways too much pressure, that's why I said you must learn to use your finger.

There is definitely a difference between the iPad screen and that of the Playbook. It is something RIM should look at.

While the Playbook is great when using the finger, it is pathetic with the stylus!