NEW DELHI: One of the biggest highlight of the Samsung Galaxy Note series smartphones is the support for S Pen. Last year with the launch Galaxy Note 9 the company upgraded the S Pen with Bluetooth functionality and it also allowed users to use it as a shutter button while taking selfies.
Now a new report has surfaced online suggesting that the company is now working on further expanding the functionality of S Pen. The company is planning to include a built-in camera in the S Pen. Samsung has filed a patent for the same at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

According to Patently Mobile, the company filed for the patent for first time in February 2017 which mainly talks about an "electric pen device" with an "optical system including a lens and an image sensor", allowing a camera to be "controlled from the external electronic device."

The patent reads, "The electric pen device includes an optical system including a lens and an image sensor configured to convert an image signal of light that has passed through the optical system to an electrical signal. The electric pen device includes a control board configured to interact with an electronic device and a communication module configured to communicate by wire or wirelessly with the electronic device, so that an image or a picture taken by a camera is confirmed and an optical zoom is controlled from the external electronic device."

It has been seen that the optical zoom functionality has always been a problem for smartphone makers as including it will increase the thickness of the smartphone. However, moving the same to an external device will give a edge to the smartphone over others.

It's been two years since the patent has been filed and it is not clear whether Samsung will bring this functionality to the S Pen with the launch of Galaxy Note 10.

Source: gadgetsnow.com