Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 needs to be a LOT more magical than this

Today we've come across a patent for a new version of a device that you may have heard of before. It's the Apple Pencil. What's that got to do with the Samsung Galaxy Note 6? One very key element – the S Pen. What it can do, what it can't do, and what we're going to expect it to do now that Apple has (finally) presented a stylus of their own. The patent we're seeing makes the Samsung Galaxy Note's S Pen look like no more than a decent first attempt at a higher-level stylus device. Can they both write and draw? Sure. That's where similarities end. See our Samsung portal for the most updated word on this device.

Sure, the Galaxy Note 5 Review we posted last year was good. Really good. Samsung far and away beats the rest of the smartphone-with-pen smartphone universe with their all-in-one solution.

That much is true.

SEE ALSO: Galaxy S6 may be Samsung's biggest release ever

But imagine what would happen if Apple revealed that their iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus worked with a new Apple Pencil. Perhaps an Apple Pencil that had the ability to control actions on smart devices in many more ways than one?

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has posted a Patent Application for a "Stylus with Inertial Sensor" applied for by Apple. This application very clearly shows what would become the Apple Pencil – with a few modifications and open ends.

There is, for example, a marker for "input-output devices" such as a button – that's #36 in these drawings.

What's most interesting about this patent for the Apple Pencil is its ability to act with or without a touchscreen display. This device may work with "a liquid crystal display, an organic light-emitting diode display, and electrophoretic display, an electrowetting display, or any other suitable type of display. Display may be a touch screen display... or may be insensitive to touch.

This Apple patent introduces so many different ways to use the stylus, it's hard to imagine the device failing to bring about a whole new category of apps for whatever devices it works with.

Apple lists the following possible uses for this next-gen stylus:

• Drum stick

• Gong beater

• Xylophone mallet

• Conductor's baton

• Sword

• Wand

• Hammer

• Joystick

Using "Joystick mode inputs", as Apple's patent describes them, users could "control an airplane in a flight simulator."

Samsung's S Pen doesn't do anything like that.

Not yet, anyway.

It may come to a point where Samsung decides that placing the S Pen inside the Galaxy Note is too important to increase the size to a place where they could implement the hardware needed for the features listed above.

At that point, Samsung would create a secondary stylus – perhaps one called the X Pen – which does the lot.

We'll see!