When the Livescribe 3 was originally announced, Livescribe’s CEO Gilles Bouchard said that “people shouldn’t have to choose between their pen and their digital devices,” without mentioning that at the time, Livescribe was making people pick between only a selection of digital devices to work with their pen. But later this year, that won’t necessarily be the case.
Yes, the pen that lets you jot notes with ink and have them magically appear on a phone or tablet will finally work with more than just an Apple iPhone or iPad, as Livescribe has announced at CES that the Livescribe+ app that has until now only existed on iOS will be brought to select Android devices with Android 4.4 “KitKat” and above this year.
That means the latest phones and tablets should support the pen, and the app has been designed from the ground up to feel like an Android app rather than just a basic port of the app.
You’ll find note transfers working from the pen, handwriting conversions to searchable text, and synchronised audio recordings, meaning the notes you take down in meetings using a conventional pen while capturing the spoken words of everyone should be able to make their way to a phone or tablet immediately after, sharing this later on via a PDF file.
“Livescribe+ for Android is much more than a port of our iOS app,” said Greg Wong, Livescribe’s Director of Product Management. “We’ve approached every aspect of this app, from the colour palette to the user interface, to optimise for the Android platform and customer expectations.”
We’re expecting a release of the app in the next few months ,and from what we understand, it will support the currently available Livescribe 3 smartpen, so while a hardware update would be nice (well over a year on from the last model), the app should work with existing stock.
