Back when screen technology was young and the likes of the Palm 3 and the Psion Series 5 were the peak of mobile computing, everyone used a stylus to work their resistive screens. The move to capacitive technology allowed fingers to be used with a light touch, and the stylus moved away from being a requirement to a niche tool.
In recent years it has made a bit more of a comeback - Microsoft has leaned heavily on the opportunities offered by the Surface Pen, Apple has taken up the challenge (at least for the iPad) with the Apple Pencil, and the occasional manufacturer (such as Samsung) still designs space for a stylus with a phablet.
That doesn’t mean the stylus is dead, nor does it mean that you are restarted to certain phones. There are many third-party options if you’re in the market for a style. One of the latest comes from Adonit, and I’ve been using one on and off for the last few weeks.
The Adonit Droid Precision Disc Stylus costs around £20/$25 in a variety of colours. It’s lightweight and thinner than a regular pen, but the brushed metal barrel feels natural and offers a sense of solidity and quality to the product.
The cap of the stylus is a screw top, which means it is not going to pop off while in transit and therefore offers a lot of protection to the stylus disc. The top can also be screwed onto the opposite end during use - which i would definitely recommend more to extend the length of the barrel (which makes for a more comfortable use) although the benefits of not losing the cap also figure.
And so to the stylus disc. Unlike the traditional stylus that ends in a tip, Adonit’s innovation is the dis. It is just over 4mm in diameter. The outer surface is a smooth touch plastic that makes it very hard to scratch the screen. Just under the plastic is a metal disc, which gives the capacitive screen something to work with. This mounted in a ball and socket joint to a more traditional looking metal core, which moves into a metallic sheath and then into the barrel. It also adds a little bit of cushioning in the system so you can tap down and not have all of that shock transmitted into the screen.
It’s small things like this that show the engineering at play in a good peripheral.
Make no mistake, this looks really weird, and I took some time to adjust to the physicality of it. Once I did, it does feel like you would expect a stylus to do so. Sketching notes in OneNote is an ease, working around the Android UI is comfortable (although it’s clear that Google’s designers are assuming finger touch, not stylus touch), and while the obvious use is handwriting recognition, using the stylus to trace out the letters of each work is strangely satisfying.
Do check the compatibility list on the main website, because the stylus is only compatible with certain screen types (curiously the iPhone and iPad will not register the stylus). This little wrinkle aside, the Adonit Droid Precision Disc Stylus delivers a really good stylus experience, even if it does take a bit of time to get used to the visual incongruity of a round plastic disc and a precise
For the vast majority of smartphone users, a stylus is no longer needed. The UI is developed enough for fat fingers, input mechanisms are built around similar principles, and consuming information and scrolling around just works. But if you are going to be creating content on your handset, and that content would be easier with stylus-based rather than finger-based action, then the this Adonit Droid stylus is well worth considering. It does take time to adjust to the disc. Once you can ‘see through’ the disc and focus on the theoretical tip, everything falls into place.
Disclaimer: Adonit’s UK PR team provided an Adonit Droid Precision Disc Stylus for review purposes.
