Description:
The latest version of the S Pen SDK for the Samsung Galaxy Note is now available to download. Apps developed with the new S Pen SDK can interact with S Pen even when it is not in contact with the Note.
The combination of Hovering Side Button and Pen Gesture can re-define the way a user interacts with the device allowing you to deliver many new innovative UX scenarios.
What Is The S Pen?
The S Pen, introduced along with the Galaxy Note, is a new input tool that makes up for the disadvantages of old input methods.
The S Pen provides faster and more accurate input than conventional stylus pens. It is an input tool that provides a similar feel to an actual pen by detecting the pressure applied on the screen with great accuracy.
You can experience the numerous advantages of the S Pen in the various Galaxy Note series of devices.
What Is The S Pen SDK?
By using the S Pen SDK, you can easily add various S Pen features to your applications.
It provides the necessary functionality to take 100% advantage of the S Pen, including checking if the S Pen is activated, checking coordinates, sensing pen pressure, detecting the on/off status of the side button on the pen, and handling hover events, which is supported on Android Ice Cream Sandwich or later.
Also, it provides various additional features such as a drawing environment with animation support, pen, eraser and text property settings in the drawing environment, adding image objects, image processing and signature recognition. These additional features make it easy to develop various apps that are specialized for S Pen.
Every time the SDK version is updated, a variety of useful features for S Pen are added and available for you to use.
New Or Changed In The S Pen SDK 2.2 Release
The S Pen’s hovering feature has been improved greatly:
- Hovering - related functions were only available in SCanvasView in the past, but the new SPenEventLibrary class makes it possible to use the hovering features in normal views.
- To make it easier to set and use hover pointer icons, which are displayed when using the pen, text, color picker, and color-fill-in tools with SCanvasView, the S Pen SDK 2.2 provides predefined setting values such as the S Pen SDK Style and S-Note Style, as well as APIs.
- It also allows setting and changing hover pointer icons in normal views through the setSPenHoverIcon method of the SPenEventLibrary class.
The S Pen Detachment Listener API has been added:
- The SPenDetachmentListener listener for handling events that occur when the S Pen is detached from or attached to the device was added. (Note: Applicable to Note 10.1 or later.)
Drawing - related features have been upgraded:
- In addition to the 4 types of pen brushes (pen, brush, pencil, and highlighter) that were available in the previous Pen Input Mode, the brush type, “calligraphy brush” has been added, and there are now 5 brush types to choose from.
- A new feature for filling the inside of shape drawn by the user with a specific color picked by the user was added. The SettingView for choosing the fill color was also added
SettingView-related features and UI have been improved:
- A Pen Setting preset feature has been added with support for up to 12 presets.
- An align setting feature was added in the Text SettingView and two new fonts (Chocolate Cookie and Rosemary) have been added.
- A Mini SettingView pop-up window that shows essential features of a SettingView, such as pen/eraser/text/color fill, in a smaller size has been added.
Object-related clipboard features have been added:
- Related APIs such as object cut, copy, paste, and clear clipboard have been added so that the user can use the clipboard after selecting the image objects that have been added to SCanvasView.
Context aware - related features have been added:
- Related APIs for getting the list of apps were run when the S Pen or earphones were detached or attached, and checking package & class information, have been added for context aware support.
Performance enhancements and stabilization have been improved:
- The file saving speed of the SAMM library has been improved.
- The Pen Only Mode have been added for using only the pen and erasers from the S Pen SDK (excluding text, image, and fill objects), is now supported.
Unnecessary and duplicate APIs have been deprecated, and the names of some APIs have been changed:
- Deprecated methods can be used in the previous 2.1 version and the current version, but they will be removed in future versions.
10 sample apps, which were provided separately for each feature, are now integrated into one sample app:
- The sample app has been changed to one sample app that shows each feature in a list format, and shows a demo of the feature that the user selects.
Examples of new features added in version 2.2 have been added to the sample app:
- Examples of changing hover pointers, linking hover and pop-up windows, checking S Pen Events in a normal view, applying image filters, and color filling have been added.
Some errors in SDK 2.1 have been corrected in this release.
In addition, it's not too late to join the Samsung Smart App Challenge, the largest app competition ever. In the "Best S Pen Apps" category, entries will be scored on their creativity and originality and the 20 apps with the best S Pen functionality will be awarded with up to $200,000 in cash prizes.
Good luck! 👍
*by andreascy*
