Amazon patents new “electronic input device,” possibly a stylus for Kindle Fire
Although most people pronounced it dead with the advent of capacitive displays, new and improved styli have been making something of a recovery lately. Tablets like the HTC Flyer helped begin the resurgence, but the Galaxy Note is what really seems to be bringing the stylus back, at least to the Android phablet nerds.
As such, it is no surprise that the new and enterprising tablet manufacturer Amazon is trying to get into the stylus game. Just today, two interesting patents filed by Amazon for stylus-like technology have come to light. They are both somewhat complicated, but they appear to be describing an "electronic input device," most likely a stylus like the one you see above, which will be optimized for annotating text and media. Not only will the device be able to make the annotations, it will also record them and help users to share, email, or print the changes as well. Another feature described in the patent is one that will allow the input device/stylus to execute certain instructions based on what you draw with the pen.
Obviously, the stylus isn't a new idea at all, but I really like the direction Amazon seems to be going with this specific implementation. Taking notes on a Kindle Fire could be very useful for studying, and being able to easily share and collaborate on annotations sounds very nice for editing your own documents. Sure, Google Docs has much of the same collaborative features, but the handwriting and diagram drawing makes it even better.
At this point, this is just a patented concept, which only really means that Amazon has thought of this idea. Still, patents are often a good indication of what may come in the future, so I would keep an eye out for some type of "Kindle Pen" to be released soon.
[Engadget]
