Microsoft research could yield best stylus ever

How you hold a pen for writing versus how you place it in your hand for drawing might be different. It might also be slightly different for erasing things you've scribbled down on paper. To have that make sense in a digital world, Microsoft is researching how we hold writing utensils for various purposes, and could end up building the best stylus ever because of it.

Microsoft is also examining how we hold our devices, namely tablets. You might balance it in your hand for writing a message, but grab it on the side for sketching. Coupled with the way you hold a stylus, the interaction you have with the tablet could tell an app quite a bit about what you intend to do.

Microsoft is also working on advanced button or tap controls for the stylus. Buttons on styli have been around for some time, but remain pretty stagnant. By taking button taps, and pairing them with gestures of the stylus or hand on the screen, you get a new world of interactions.

The video below shows off what Microsoft is working on in quite a bit of detail. Keep in mind you won't be seeing this any time soon, as it's still in the research phase. It's also likely to be proprietary to future iterations of the Surface tablet.

Source: Microsoft