Tech

Microsoft Announces Surface Dial As An Accessory To Surface Studio: Is It The Coolest Input Device Ever By Microsoft?

Madhu
First Posted: Oct 29, 2016 04:40 AM EDT

Wednesday witnessed an upheaval in the technology market with the launch of Microsoft Surface Studio during the Windows 10 event, marking the day with the introduction of Microsoft's first complete package of Windows 10 PC. Microsoft Surface Dial is another device that was announced by the company as an accessory to the Surface Studio, on the same day, reported Wired

While, the Surface Studio PC has been specially designed for artists and designers offering a 28-inch display that moves down freely into a drawing mode, the Surface Dial is more of a puck shaped gadget that can attach itself to the Surface Studio display or directly on a board offering a new input method altogether.

We are quite smitten by this cool piece of silver glazed accessory that's actually a navigation instrument that sits comfortably on the Surface Studio PC and can be twisted like a door knob, but works like a keyboard or a mouse. Just that, it's does not really work like the mouse or the keyboard.

In fact, it's well understood by considering the Surface Studio as the sketching surface, the Surface Pen Stylus as your pencil for creating the draft, and the Dial as the color palette. It works as the tools for your coloring objective that you generally hold it in the other hand. You can click the Dial, double click, and twirl it on the surface, while it detects the position of the display.

The Surface Dial indicator connects to the Surface Studio display via Bluetooth and creates a shortcut by physical means and anatomizes what's on the screen, whether it's Microsoft Paint, a map app, Photoshop, or anything else. You can even scroll through the page by twisting the knob or the Dial with Microsoft Edge browser for Windows. Wait! You can even reorient the map or zoom if needed. What's interesting about the Dial is its creative ability to adjust color saturation, size of the brush, and the positioning the screen in Sketchable. What more? It can even rotate the complete canvas!

According to The Verge, Microsoft is adding to the already strong potential of the Surface Dial by allowing the third-party manufacturers to develop their own radial menus that get activated inside their app when the dial is twisted. But, they are not limiting this to just the third-party developers, but PC manufacturers like, HP, Dell, or Lenovo can also make their own Surface Dials. 

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