Ice Cream Sandwich Provides Android With Native Stylus Support

Google’s latest build Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0 now has native stylus support enabling developers to easily take advantage of pressure recognition, hover tracking and nib-tilt, together with differentiation between stylus and finger use, as well as providing support for styluses with up to three buttons.

The discovery was made by Reddit who discovered the native Stylus support within the Android 4.0 highlights, and has been added by Google to enhance the sketching and drawing capabilities of Android 4.0 devices.




Android 4.0 now has a specific API for stylus support: Stylus input, button support, hover events :

“Android 4.0 includes full support for stylus input events, including tilt and distance axes, pressure, and related motion event properties. To help applications distinguish motion events from different sources, the platform adds distinct tool types for stylus, finger, mouse, and eraser. For improved input from multi-button pointing devices, the platform now provides distinct primary, secondary, and tertiary buttons, as well as back and forward buttons.

Hover-enter and hover-exit events are also added, for improved navigation and accessibility. Developers can build on these new input features to add powerful interactions to their apps, such as precise drawing and gesturing, handwriting and shape recognition, improved mouse input, and others.”