[CES 2014] A stylus goes down pretty well with your smartphone or tablet, even more so if you are one who cannot bear the sight of fingerprints on your mobile device. Not only that, a stylus works a whole lot more accurately compared to your finger during those tense moments when you need to get the exact pixel touched or selected. Qualcomm, more famous for their mobile chips than anything else, has taken the plunge into a different world – by churning out a stylus which is able to play nice with a smartphone or tablet sans wires, using sound alone.
It sounds (pardon the pun) like magic, but in reality, it is actually plain old technology being put to good use. Known as the Qualcomm Ultra Sound NotePad, the demonstration video that you view above will depict just how a device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor as well as a set of special microphones are able to “listen” for vibrations which are made by a pen. Best of all is, this pen does not even need to touch the screen, but rather, to be near it. I admit, it will feel pretty weird at first since we are all infinitely more familiar with grasping a stylus as it dances across a touchscreen, but barriers are always meant to be broken. In a nutshell, you can now write notes, draw pictures, or doodle on a sheet of paper that is located next to your tablet, only to see it replicated digitally. This is still a proof-of-concept, and it might never make it to the real world. Only time will tell.