This June article in NVIDIA blog on DirectSylus technology didn't attract much attention until three days ago, with launching of HP Slate 7 Extreme, Zotac, EVGA, PNY and other 7-inch Tegra 4 tablets based on NVIDIA Tegra Note reference design. Even now, much more attention is paid to the general prowess of Tegra 4 $199 tablet: say, can it play GTA 5 and how smooth?
I couldn't care less about GTA 5 playability, but Direct Touch 2.0 technology employed by Direct Stylus here intrests me very much:
Active 1.5mm styluses on the market that are capable of making strokes of varying width typically require a dedicated digitizer and cost at least $20. In contrast, the DirectStylus solution is an inexpensive passive conductive stylus.That's official NVIDIA statement, and there's not much else known at this point. Original Direct Touch 1.0 (so to speak) for Tegra 3 didn't get much recognition, it hardly was even noticed.
DirectStylus works in conjunction with Direct Touch 2.0 technology which supports up to 300 scans a second (five times the typical 60Hz touch scan rate) to capture more detailed movement of the stylus for smooth ink and fine tip movement.
Mr. NVIDIA Man, and CEO Jen Hsun-Huang himself was quite cryptic about the technology, saying though that it's software based:
In other words, the capacitive sensor used may possibly be driven by an ordinary Cypress Semiconductor chip of 2011 epoch (year of mass manufacture of now quite obsolete 1280x800 screen for this Tegra Note reference slate), and not their seriously improved (and more expensive) TrueTouch® Gen4 Touchscreen Controller, capable of working with 2 mm tipped stylus on a hardware level.
So, if it's software driven, the question is does it take powers of only Tegra 4 to be implemented, or it can be back ported to lesser SoCs? This below example of Snapdragon 800 use with stylus is not indicative of anything, as Sony Xperia Z Ultra uses its own sensor technology with a special hardened coat on top:
You've just seen the best phablet of 2013 IMHO. Best $700 you can spend on phablet. When you get it, try using your finger touches much less, the screen is too beautiful for your fingerprints.
Talking about reviews of Sony Xperia Z Ultra, the one which this photo was taken from can report whatever, I won't read it, as this photo is so disgusting:
Guy(s) who made this mess were apparently clueless about existence of a simple technology of picking their fingerprints from this photo and using them to break into, say, their fingerprint protected bank accounts.
Sony Xperia Z Ultra deserves to be used with best stylus out there. As you may know, I've chosen mine more than a year ago, it's this silverpoint handcrafted from a piece of soft 900 silver wire and mounted in Staedtler Mars technico 2.0 mm mechanical pencil:
Sure it's expensive: German professional pencil was about $24, and a little piece of silver was about $8 ten years ago. But my Sony Xperia Z Ultra, when I will afford it, that is, deserves nothing less. Nothing as scratchy as steel ballpoint and definitely not finger tips leaving loads of greasy smears.
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