Video: S Pen Features on the Galaxy Note 5

The S Pen featured on the Galaxy Note 5, when not stuck upside down in your device, features a few minor tweaks over last year’s S Pen on the Galaxy Note 4. First, it has an awesome clicker mechanism built-in, giving it a more pen-like feel while in-hand. Even though it truly serves zero functionality besides sounding and feeling good, and helping you remove it from the phone, it does offer a “cool” attribute.

As for the software side, the additions to the S Pen feature list are the ability to write notes down when your display is off, customizable app shortcuts on Air Command, and a Scrolling Screenshot function. For Screen Off Memo, when you remove the S Pen while the device’s display is off, you can write down notes, numbers, or an address, and then save that to Action Memos inside of the S Note application. This is a helpful feature for those people who always find themselves in a rush when taking notes.

The Scrolling Screenshot function allows you to take elongated screenshots of a webpage. To use this in a browser app, bring out the S Pen, select Screen Write, then a screenshot flash will occur. In the bottom left of the display, the text “Screen Capture” will appear. When you select it, the device will screenshot an additional section of the page, with the ability for you to screenshot an entire page if you so choose. As an example, this is what that looks like when completed. To enlarge, open the image in a separate tab.

Other features include everything we had on previous iterations of the software. This includes Smart Select, Screen Write, and application shortcuts. These shortcuts can be customized to whatever applications you would like.

With Smart Select, users can select a portion of whatever is shown on the display, allowing you to draw on top of it, share it to S Note, send it through an app, or save it to your on-device Scrapbook. For Screen Write, the device snaps an entire screenshot, then allows you to draw on it or share it. This is extremely handy when you have Google Maps open, with the ability for the user to hand draw directions to a specific location.

All of these features, and the correct way to insert the S Pen into the Galaxy Note 5, are highlighted in the video below.

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