Air Command Explained

Among the new features in Galaxy Note 3, Air Command probably is the most impressive one.  Our beloved S Pen gets a new life in the Note 3.

When you hover the S Pen over the screen and then press the button on the S-Pen, you will immediately get a palette-like menu with five available actions.  The Air Command works like a context menu in most systems.

There are five available actions (or quick commands) in Air Command: Action Memo, Scrapbook, Screen Write, S Finder, Pen Window.

Although Air Command may have many usages, you may find that it makes note-taking extremely easy, quick and enjoyable.

Action Memo

Action Memo allows you to write a note in your Note 3. Yes, this is not new. We got this feature since Note 1. What makes Action Memo differ from our old memos is that it can automatically execute a function or convert the handwritten documents or drawings into formatted content.

The functions that Action Memo can execute include:

• initiating a call with the number or name in the memo;
• adding  to contacts based on the number and name written in the memo;
• messaging the number or the name written;
• sending email to the email address written in the memo;
• looking up an address on Google Maps with the address in the memo;
• searching the web;
• saving a task to a to-do list;

Action Memo simply hooks the static info in the memo with some possible operations. Now you memo is alive!

Scrapbook

Scrapbook allows users to collect, organize, and track content and information from all sources in one place (Scrapbook).

The contents in the Scrapbook are organized as categories, which are created by you.  When you want to save content or info, you can select any existing category or create a new one.

You can scrape part of a web page into your Scrapbook by drawing the area you want to save with the S Pen in Scrapbook mode. The content in your drawing area (based on the top and bottom location of your drawing) will be saved, together with the title and URL of the content. Next time, when you open this content, you can directly go to the web page if you want.

You may use the easy clip (we already have this in Galaxy Note II) to scrape any contents (although we use it mainly for pictures.) and save it to the Scrapbook.

It is interesting to note that you can also embed YouTube videos in Scrapbook. Simply draw something in the video window, the screenshot of the video will be saved, together with the title and URL of the video. You may also add some notes to it. When you open it from Scrapbook, you can directly play the video within your memo without going to YouTube. Of course, the video is not saved, only the URL of the video is saved.

Screen Write

Screen Write allows you to capture the screenshot directly. This is not new. In our 2-year old Galaxy Note (Note 1) and Note II, we already have 3 different ways to take screenshot directly. The Screen Write adds one more practical feature on the screenshot-capturing: you can write notes or comments or additional info for it before saving.  This is somehow similar to LG’s Quick Memo.

S Finder

S Finder allows you to search everything in your Note 3: documents, photos, events, messages, emails, help page.

S Finder can even search for hand-written content (even including symbols and formulas) in S Notes and memos. This is a long-anticipated feature for S Note users.

The search is quite powerful. You can use keywords plus filters such as date, location and content type, to narrow down the search to get desired contents.

Another super-cool feature of S Finder is that it can even search phone settings, and you can change the settings directly within S Finder. This can be very useful because otherwise, you have to go through a lot of setting pages to do it. Sometimes, you may be not sure about the location of such settings.

Pen Window

Pen Window allows you to open a small application window for a true multitasking without affecting current activity. You can achieve this by simply drawing any shapes on the screen with your S Pen.

Currently, you can choose only 8 apps for the Pen Window: Calculator, Clock, YouTube, Phone, Contacts, ChatON, Hangouts and Internet (aka browser).

Of course, this is a complement to the multi-window function (we already have in all previous Note devices).

It seems  Air Command in Note 3 is really impressive. Previous generation Note devices like Note II, Note 10.1 and Note 8.0 will very likely get this feature through a future update. Note 1 probably will not get it.

What do you think about this Air Command? Useful or just a gimmick? Let us know in the comment box below.