Best Smartphones with Stylus Available

Smartphones are easily one of the best inventions of our time, and have become integrated in our daily life to the point where it is nearly impossible to function without one.

But for all that the average smartphone has to offer, there are some drawbacks. As the cellphone moved away from keyboard-based operation, and was instead replaced with a touch screen, there are some unique challenges to be overcome when using a smartphone.

For anyone who has spent a long amount of time trying to type on their phone, the advantages of a stylus are obvious. Not only can you easily click smaller links and images without worrying about countless typos, a stylus can help make your typing that more efficient, and allow you to easy use auto-complete services with a flick of a wrist.

As an added bonus, styluses can be used while wearing gloves, making them idea for cold weather situations. Of course, for anyone who uses their phone for creative pursuits, such as drawing, editing, or even just playing games, a stylus can be a real lifesaver.

With so many different kinds of smart phones on the market, it’s not surprising that there are almost as many stylus combinations available. While anyone can go out and purchase a screen-sensitive pen or cheep stylus from the store, there is a level of comfort and accessibility that comes with a built-in stylus that is impossible to beat. Not only are built in styluses made to store in or alongside your phone, meaning you never have to worry about leaving your stylus at home, but they come with a wide range of features, from touch sensitivity settings to unique commands, depending on the stylus.

Need to find our top pick in a hurry? Check out the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+. It has an excellent mix of power and features.

While you may be sold on the idea of a built-in stylus for your smartphone, it can be difficult to know what you’re looking for, especially with so many amazing options available on the market. That’s why we’ve gone through the effort of pulling together the best smartphones with styluses on the market today, so you can spend less time stressing over what phone to get and more time creating, communicating, and more.

In order to bring you the best-of-the-best in the world of technology, we’ve gone ahead and done the research, so you don’t have to. We pull from verified customer feedback, as well as overall specifications and available features, to help ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. We also pay attention to things like battery life, replacement options for lost styluses, storage size, and overall value, to make sure you’re getting the best deals available. No matter if you’re looking to write your next dissertation, or are painting a masterpiece on your lunch break, with the right smartphone and stylus combination, you’ll find yourself wondering how you ever lived without one.

Without further ado, here are the 9 best smartphones with styluses available on the market today.

Best Smartphones with Styluses

Without further ado, here are our picks for the 9 best smartphones with styluses:

1. Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ Factory Unlocked Cell Phone

A high-performance device that is built to be as versatile as it is convenience, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ represents a marked step up in the Note subseries of the family. As their flagship stylus-bearing model, it incorporates a wide range of great features. The nearly 6.8” Bezel-less display is their biggest yet, an OLED display that looks cleaner and sharper than anything that has come before it. Another aspect of visual quality, the camera, continues to impress, as well, with three camera lenses that switch in and out based on the context to offer great picture and video quality.

The Note 10+ does a lot more than look pretty, too. Performance has improved across the board as well, with the lag that many users experience in Android phones all but entirely eliminated. The Note 10+ is powered by a new all-day battery that intelligently powers at different speeds, ensuring you’re getting the juice you need depending on what you’re doing. Fast charging means that this long-battery life can be maintained with only a little time, too.

Aside from smooth stylus control, it also benefits from air gestures and hand-writing to text thanks to the incredibly smart S Pen, meaning that you quite easily access many of the phone’s stylus controlled functions without having to actually touch the stylus to screen.

2. Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Factory Unlocked Phone

The Galaxy Note 9 may not be quite a match for the 10+, nowadays, but if you’re looking for phones with stylus at a more affordable price point, then this offer is going to get increasingly better as the months roll on. Many of the features that make the Note 10+ great are still present in the 9, even at a slightly reduced point. It still has a very long-lasting battery, it still uses the great off-screen controls of the S Pen, and it still has a very large, high-quality low bezel screen at 6.4 inches.

The Note 9 marked the moment that Samsung’s smartphones started coming with the kind of storage you would normally see in desktop PCs, too, with 128GB storage. Add to that the optimized approach to networking that it has, and you can easily download gigs worth of data in very little time.

Combining that screen space with the network technology, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is a great option for those who use their smartphone as a second screen, especially for gaming, streaming, and even working remotely. The self-adapting Dual Aperture lens that adjusts its settings automatically is another strength worth making note of, as well.

3. Huawei Mate 20

While perhaps not as impressive a beast when it comes to pure specs as the latest of the developer’s high-end series, the Huwaei Mate 20 Pro, the Mate 20 still outperforms many of the most recent models of their competitors’ flagship series. With Huawei, many of the improvements are easily and rightfully credited to the pedigree of hardware. The Kirin 980 processor, with its 3 clusters of 8 cores adjusts the delivery of power automatically based on how the phone is being used so seamlessly, it’s almost as if all features were constantly open and powered. Switching from app to app is almost painfully smooth.

Aside from a snappy response, this also ensures that the 4000 mAh battery is used as efficiently as possible, offering the Mate 20 a very long life, as well. The upgraded USB makes for fast super charging, too. While the LCD screen might not quite match the sharpness of some of the OLEDs on the competitors out there, it does outperform just about every other LCD phone on the market.

The Mate 20 doesn’t benefit from the stylus specific improvements of, for instance, the S Pen, but the impressive hardware will more than makeup for that with many users.

4. Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Factory Unlocked Cell Phone with 256GB

Between the Note 10+ and the Note 9 is the latest flagship model from the Samsung Galaxy series, without quite as many high-end spec improvements as the plus. However, despite lacking the plus, the Note 10 doesn’t lack all that much compared to its souped-up cousin. It may have a smaller screen, reduced battery life, and reduced RAM, but the power of the processor, the huge storage, the OLED screen quality, and fast-changing all remain.

The primary strength of the Note family’s recent entries, the S Pen, remains a staple with this phone, as well. The smoothness with which you can gesture in the air with the pen, and see the reactions on screen, can be genuinely staggering at first, then quickly become an essential part of owning cell phones with stylus features.

The core functions of the Samsung Galaxy all remain as snappy and convenient as ever. However, another improvement worth noting with the Note 10 is the serious improvement to the speakers. They’ve been upgraded with bass and treble optimization and enabling the Atmos software onboard offers great stereo separation for sounds, as well. All in all, one of the few flagship phone with stylus series worth paying the full price for.

5. LG Q Stylo+ Plus

If affordability is a big deal for you, then the LG Q Stylo+ remains an impressive buy even if it is a couple of years long in the tooth, now. LG’s attempt to design phones around the stylus, rather than simply adding a few stylus features, was met with a lot of praise when it first released and it still holds up.

The smartphone stylus becomes more than just a mode of control with the LG Q Stylo+, it becomes the key to unlocking the full convenience of the phone. Doodling, accessing features in locked mode, image editing, and easy-browsing through notifications are done with ease not seen in many other phones, not even those that also use a stylus.

The stylus is the star of the show with the LG Q Stylo+ in a way it isn’t with many other pens, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only strength of the phone worth making note of. The 6.2” FHD+ display was one of the biggest for its time and, though outsized now, it still remains impressive large and clear. The high-speed autofocus camera is not only great for both film and photo in different environments, but the QLens functions add a search engine-like feature, so you can shop and scan for almost any object you see with ease.

6. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 SM-N950F/DS

This phone marked a point in the Galaxy Note series that the convenience of using the stylus itself became a key part of the flagship series’ identity. Before the Note 8, the stylus was useful for controls, but it wasn’t really considered just how important it was to make it as accessible as possible. With the pop-out stylus functionality and the improved design of the slim and ergonomic S stylus, the family of Samsung phones with stylus suddenly became a lot more comfortable to use.

The Galaxy Note 8 originally came with the Android version 7.1.1.1, and still ships in that state already, but it can easily be upgraded to Android 9 and still runs that version of the operating system quite well. Though it may be a little older than some of the other Notes on the list now, it still has the family’s pedigree for excellent screens, as demonstrated by the huge 6.2” display.

Though older Note phones do have a bad reputation due to the sheer heat produced by them, the Note 8 is when the series started using Li-ion batteries that are a lot safer and a lot more comfortable, to boot.

7. LG Electronics Stylo 4 Factory Unlocked Phone

While not quite as old as the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the LG Electronics Stylo 4 does tend to go for a lower price, but then again, low pricing has always been a benefit of the Stylo series. As such, it’s not a high-end performing phone and you shouldn’t expect the kind of processing power of visual fidelity out of it as you would out of other flagships. However, the wide range of convenient features win plenty of points in favor of the Stylo 4.

A great 13 MP single rear camera makes for a very cost-effective investment for any portable photographer, including features like Grid Shot to take collages on the fly, Match Shot to take pictures of both perspectives the phone offers, and more. The 6.2” LCD screen is decent for the price, as well. The phone is a practical purchase, as well, thanks in part to the memory that can be expanded to 1 TB without much in the way of lag, as well as a 4000 mAh battery that keeps it going for longer.

The stylus controls are, as ever, a delight with the Stylo family, with features like capturing GIF files, off-screen memo access, and image editing with ease.

8. LG Stylo 5 Factory Unlocked Phone

Another one of the most cost-effective flagship series currently available, the Stylo 5 represents a marked improvement over the Stylo 4 in a variety of ways. The first is the improvement of the Snapdragon 450 chipset, as well as a 1.8 GHz Corex Octa-Core processor. While the RAM is still small enough that it can quite match the computational power of the Note series, it does mean that it runs the apps on the LG UI much more smoothly than before.

However, the Stylo 5 marked the moment that stylus functionality became the core component of the family’s design, rather than just an added bonus. Memo pads, coloring books, image editors, GIF capture features, and a range of other stylus specific features, alongside a comfortable and well-designed stylus make it clear that the tool is the central feature of this phone.

The 5 MP Wide-Angle Front Camera might not be the most impressive, but it is very decent for the price, allowing for naturally wide shots that are great for landscapes and group shots. Furthermore, the 3,500 mAh battery might not be quite as big as the other Stylo batteries featured here, but still offers a very decent amount of battery life, able to keep running for longer than most.

9. Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite N770F

If you’re looking for all of the style and performance of a Note, but you want a phone with a stylus that isn’t quite as extensive and expensive, then the Note 10 Lite can be precisely the kind of thing you’re looking for. The 6.7 inch OLED display shows that it’s no micro-machine, by any measure, with the Super Amoled screen offering some of the clearest visuals in smartphones of all types, at the moment. Like the others in the Note 10 family, it also makes good use of the versatility o the S Pen, which glides easily across the screen and can be used for remote gestures, not just on-screen stylus control.

The Note 10 also offers all of the practicality you would ask for from any smartphone. This includes the hefty 128 GB internal memory that comes as standard, making sure you have space for videos, music, and photos galore. The Android 10 OS also runs all of the latest apps as smoothly as easily as possible. The battery may not be quite as long-lived as it is in other Note 10 models, but can still last up to 16 hours a day with even heavy active use.

How Styluses Work

Ever wonder how styluses work without causing damage to your phone, tablet, or other surface? This video goes over the basics, as well as some of the different kinds of touch screens out there. While this focuses largely on tablets, the same principles work for your phone.

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