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An iPhone with a stylus? It could materialize in 2019 if a new rumor is accurate

An iPhone with a stylus could be a part of Apple's plans for 2019.
An iPhone with a stylus could be a part of Apple's plans for 2019.
Apple could be set to launch a new iPhone model that will compete directly with the Samsung Galaxy Note. The new iPhone will use a supercapicitor stylus that offers a more pen-like feel according to a new rumor out of South Korea.

Apparently, hell has frozen over – Apple could be set to release an iPhone that will come stylus if a new rumor coming out of South Korea has any merit. The late Steve Jobs is of course famous for saying, “if you see a stylus they blew it," at the launch of the iPhone in 2007. People have often taken this quote out of context, however. Jobs was referring to devices like the Palm Pilot which incorporated a stylus as an integral part of the UI/navigation experience. He was not referring to a tool like the Apple Pencil, which is used not for navigation, but creative and other types of input. For Jobs, fingers were all you needed to be able to interact with the UI of a smartphone.

The purported stylus-compatible iPhone wouldn’t necessarily be compatible with the Apple Pencil, however, which will be reserved for Apple’s iPad Pro models. Instead, Apple is said to be working with third-party stylus vendors on a supercapacitor stylus. This would take a different approach to the one employed by Samsung on its Galaxy Note line that feature electro-magnetic resonance technology it co-developed with Wacom. Apple’s approach would be cheaper to implement and not require additional layers on the display. It would also feel more pen-like.

Apple CEO Tim Cook once inadvertently hinted at Apple’s plans for an iPhone with a stylus back in 2016 that lends weight to this new report. In an interview with India’s NDTV Cook said, “If you’ve ever seen what can be created with that pencil on an iPad or an iPhone, it’s really unbelievable.” At the time it was thought that Cook had misspoke, but now it seems that he may have let Apple’s plans slip out well in advance of its plans.

Although Cook mentions the use of an Apple Pencil in this context, it is quite likely that Apple has experimented with the use of the Apple Pencil on its iPhones -- but that implementation also involves adding additional layers to the screen of the device. This is apparently a direction Apple appears to be avoiding in its current plans. Its iPhones already have an additional 3D Touch layer on them, something that is missing from the iPad because of its support for Apple Pencil input.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2017 10 > An iPhone with a stylus? It could materialize in 2019 if a new rumor is accurate
Sanjiv Sathiah, 2017-10-16 (Update: 2017-10-17)