Samsung vs Google for Handwriting...

[billykac]

If you do HW recognition, which do you prefer?

 

[unknownuser02]

I didn't even know Google had HW recognition...

 

[billykac]

Can't tell if it's b/c I've been using Google's keyboard and handwriting apps since they first came out, but I've defaulted back to them on the Note 5. I need to investigate the Samsung handwriting app to see if there are any hidden gems in there that I might be overlooking.

 

[ccpopham]

How do you change it from Samsung to google for HW recognition?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[billykac]

How do you change it from Samsung to google for HW recognition?

Posted via the Android Central App

Here.

 

[billykac]

For any N5 owners who actually use the S Pen for handwriting recognition, you may be interested in checking out Google's app. I have been comparing both (Samsung and Google) and the Google app seems to be far better. But maybe it's b/c I still have more to learn about the Samsung app.

Here's what's great about Google's app:
- You can control how fast it'll respond to your input
- You can choose pen width
- THE coolest thing: when writing in portrait, where there's limited horizontal space, you can write one line closer to the top of the input area, and continue writing more below it, and it will parse both lines properly. Brilliant!

Here's what's great about Samsung's app:
- The handwriting area automatically pops up when using the S Pen. Very handy.
- There are feature packs that extend handwriting functionality in very practical ways.

If you have any hints/tips for using Samsung's handwriting app, please let me know. I would love to hear that there's more to it.

 

[billykac]

Interesting that there's not a lot of discussion on this N5 forum regarding handwriting, especially since the S Pen and so many other features of the N5 are so well optimized for free-hand input. We really ought to shout about this more before Apple "invents" handwriting input in an upcoming version of the iPhone - especially since they have just rolled-out their stylus in last week's announcement.

For any interested forumite, I wanted to share my recent thoughts on this topic.

I installed Google Keyboard and Google Handwriting Input on my N5 as soon as I got it. I know and love these apps from my other phones. Shortly after installing, I decided to uninstall them and learn to live inside of the provided Samsung apps to see what they offer - at least for a while. This has been going fairly well until I opened a larger document and found-out that the Samsung keyboard and handwriting apps have the same flaw as Swiftkey - they can't function if the document is more than a few pages. If you are not familiar with this SK issue, just go to their site and look it up - use the term "keyboard lag". It's been a major problem for them for years now.

So, I am back to Google's apps and I gotta say - they are sooooo much better. Definitely faster, better designed and easier to use, IMO. You lose the ability to open the Handwriting app when you extract the S Pen, but that's a minor niggle. The native writing pad is still present if/when you prefer to use that for input on specific fields.

If you haven't tried the Google apps yet, give them a go. They are pretty amazing on this wonderful N5 platform.