[Galaxy Note 3 General] Noam23:
I do want to start with saying that I do love the Note 3 because of its design and big screen, and might even purchase it. It was important for me to say this right at the beginning.

One of the great selling points of the Galaxy Note 3 is undoubtedly the S-PEN together with "Air command". Samsung is marketing this as something that can NOT be found on any other device.

I would like to raise a claim here, that in order to "sell" the S-PEN, Samsung sabotaged the ease of use of the device, that could have relied much more on finger use (instead of S-PEN).

Let's take a look at the features presented by the new "Air command", and ask ourselves, is the S-PEN really required here? :

1.

Action MEMO

: here you can draw any kind of memo you can think of. What will you do with such a feature ? Samsung really has no clue, the only thought they came by is to write the name and number of a person, and let the dialer automatically recognize the characters. While I do acknowledge the high level of character recognition taking place here, I ask myself, is this the most efficient way to do things? let's say I have to quickly take a name and phone number, why on earth should I do it with the S-PEN ? a much easier way would be NOT to take the S-PEN out of its holster, and simply fire the Action MEMO with a finger, and then, simply write the name and phone number using that huge keyboard. Factually, this is a much faster way to do things. This is true for ANY memo which is based on text or numbers (which 99% of the memos you'll take). You could also use your fingers for crude drawings. The only thing in a memo that really require the S-PEN, is for fine drawings.

2.

Scrap booker

: I have no idea why the S-PEN is needed for this task. I can easily use my finger to circle the content that I want to save. Doing it with the finger without having to get the S-PEN out of its holster is a MUCH faster way to do this. The S-PEN gives NO advantage here, just disadvantage for slowing you.

3.

Screen writer

: here you take a screen capture, and can write on it. In order to take the screen capture, I could have used my finger, no need for the S-PEN. I do agree that if I want to draw something sophisticated on top of that image, an S-PEN would be a better tool than the finger, but for anything not sophisticated (like pointing things on that image, a finger would have done the job nicely).

4.

S finder

: again, I have no clue why this is a S-PEN feature. This can be done much easier with onscreen keyboard. S-PEN provides no added functionality, and just make you reach this option slower because the S-PEN has to be taken out of its holster.

5.

PEN window

: this is a great multitasking idea. But, why on earth does this requires the S-PEN ? take a look at the LG G2 "Q Slide" feature, which does exactly the same, only with the fingers. It even allows to control transparency (that can't be controlled with Note3). The S-PEN, again, is not really required here, and only make things slower and more cumbersome.

So, to conclude, out of the five features of the new "Air command", features # 2, 4 and 5, should not have been programmed to require the S-PEN, the S-PEN has no real use for them, and just slows you down. Features # 1 and 3, do gain something from the S-PEN, but let's remember that feature #1 could have used the keyboard to insert text/numbers, or finger for crude drawings, so the S-PEN is only required when you need to add "fine" drawings. Feature #3 could have used the finger to take the screen picture, and the finger to draw crude drawings on top of it, so the S-PEN is really only required when "fine" drawings needs to be done on that image.

To repharse, we see that the only places where the S-PEN is helpful with Air command, is when we have to do *fine* drawings on a MEMO, or screen capture. For the average user, this will represent, I believe, maybe 1% of the times he opens Air command. The other 99% of the times when Air command will be opened, will be for other stuff that DOES NOT require the S-PEN, and could have been done much much quicker if were allowed by finger.

Samsung did a terrible thing here, I believe. They knew most people never use that S-PEN, so they took really important features, and instead of giving us quick access for these features with our finger, they created them to be compatible only with the S-PEN. Why ? so we'll have more reason to buy the Note 3, which is the only device with an S-PEN.

I'm really disappointed by this kind of strategy.