Ten One Design working on a pressure sensitive Bluetooth stylus for the iPad 3

Ten One Design has just announced that it is working on a pressure sensitive Bluetooth 4.0 stylus for the next generation iPad 3. Ten One has a great reputation when it comes to accessories and this one looks to take that to the next level. The new stylus which is currently in development uses technology that has never been used before in an iPad stylus.

Using the latest Bluetooth 4.0 standards’ enables Ten One Design to create a stylus that is pressure sensitive. This basically means that it can represent a much truer pen like experience where a line is thicker or darker depending on the pressure made with the sylus. As the iPad screen is capacitive, it can’t distinguish how hard the screen has been pressed; just that it has been pressed. Ten One Design believes with the use of Bluetooth 4.0 this can now be made a reality.

You may have been hearing good things about Bluetooth 4.0. It's a fast wireless connection, and is fully supported by the CoreBluetooth framework in iOS5. Bluetooth 4.0 devices don't need to pair with your iPhone or iPad, they just connect and work. Also, the battery life is dramatically better - think months or a year on a single coin battery. We've developed the first pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad that uses Bluetooth 4.0.

The pen will offer full pressure sensitivity, palm rejection capability, lights, buttons and no need for Bluetooth pairing. There is already an SDK available which will allow app developers to immediate integrate support for the stylus in their apps. The pen will only work with iOS devices that have Bluetooth 4.0. Currently that is only the iPhone 4S however it is almost certain that the iPad 3 will have it too.

The pen still needs to garner FCC approval but Ten One Design is hanging back on full production until it believes that there is enough developer support for the product. If this works as advertised, that shouldn’t take very long!

Source: Ten One Design