Staedtler introduced a digital pen a while ago. I never got excited about it and have seen a similar looking digital pen in Aldi in the UK. It looked so similar that I was wondering whether they were the same and whether Staedtler just relabelled an OEM product.
Their new digital product might be more interesting, though I don’t have any further information yet1. It’s a digital pencil‽2 You can see some picture at their Initium site. You’ll also find pictures of their new fountain pens there.
- I asked Staedtler for further information and will let you know if I get a reply. [↩]
- Two ideas so far: It could either just be a pencil similar to Faber-Castell’s Perfect Pencil with a conductive end, to be used on tablets and phones, or, less likely, it could be something similar to Staedtler’s existing digital pen. [↩]
What would be the difference between a digital pen and a digital pencil in terms of it’s use on a tablet. I’m scratching my analogue head on this one.
Kevin, this device is not meant for the use on a tablet but on paper. When this digital pen is used the position of its tip is recorded so that the tracks made by the user can be imported e.g. as a bitmap and edited later. Besides that, it is also possible to use it as some kind of pointing device.
Thanks Gunther for the explanation.
Just to clarify, my understanding is that Staedtler’s pencil is just a pencil with a conductive end that can be used as a stylus. I probably shouldn’t have called it a “digital pencil” in this blog post, but I chose that because Staedtler described it as a pencil that “bridges the gap between the analogue and the digital world“. Staedtler showed this pencil together with a tablet, this could have meant all sorts of things, see the speculation in the blog post. I wouldn’t have been too surprised if there had been an announcement that there’ll be an official “The Pencil App”…
The product described by Gunther is Staedtler’s digital pen.
Oops! Sorry for confusing these implements. – Matthias, I assume that you are referring to “The Pencil”. This is a special WOPEX pencil with an end suitable for operating a touch screen.
And thank you for the interrobang