USI pens have lastly reached the promised land. By the way in which, USI stands for the Common Stylus Initiative. The two.0 specification will now add assist for NFC wi-fi charging. That removes some of the obnoxious obstacles from a USI wi-fi pen.
USI pens, that are natively supported on just about all new Chromebooks in addition to some PCs, are boring by design. A USI 1.0 pen is suitable with each different, so as to swap forwards and backwards as you see match. However the usual has at all times had one weak point, which is shared by earlier styluses as properly. They’ve both required a skinny AAAA battery or have used an ungainly wired USB charging connector to recharge.
USI 2.0 adjustments all that. Now, the usual helps UFC charging, in order that pens will have the ability to cost whereas resting on a Chromebook’s NFC pad (if it has one) or magnetically docked. In fact, that signifies that your stash of AAAA batteries has now change into largely irrelevant.
One other main change is the improve to the colour pallet. A USI 1.0 pen solely supported a measly 256 colours, making it appropriate for some fundamental drawing however not far more. Now, the USI 2.0 customary helps over 16 million colours, making a USI 2.0 pen far more appropriate for creative inking, drawing, and illustrating.
The USI 2.0 specification additionally helps in-cell show panels, the place the contact panel is beneath the glass substrate moderately than on high of it. The Common Stylus Initiative, which controls the USI customary, additionally mentioned that these pens can have elevated tilt assist as properly. USI 2.0 launches six years after the unique specification, authored in 2016.
As PCWorld’s senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft information and chip know-how, amongst different beats. He has previously written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.