Advertisement

Samsung brings new controls to the Note 9 with redesigned S Pen

You can use it to play music or work the camera.

As we geared up for today's Samsung event, the announcement for which teased us with a close-up image of the Galaxy Note 9's S Pen, there's been a fair bit of speculation regarding what new features might be coming with the phone's redesigned stylus. An FCC filing that surfaced last month gave us a peek -- namely that it would be Bluetooth-enabled -- but today we got to see what the S Pen can do and how it works with the Note 9.

Samsung confirmed today that the S Pen comes with Bluetooth, and it's calling it the "ultimate remote control." You can use it to tell the Note 9 to snap a picture, to play or pause music, or to control slides for a slide show -- which the Samsung team did onstage. The redesigned stylus also now has a finer, more sensitive nib. Plus, the S Pen charges in the Note 9 in just under a minute.

And we can expect more uses for the S Pen in the near future. Samsung says it will be opening up its SDK to everyone so that developers can integrate the S Pen's remote control features in their apps.

Follow all the latest news from Galaxy Unpacked 2018 here!