How does the lg stylus (stylo 3) work?

The LG Stylo is the only budget stylus phone, and it doesn't cost much more than similar spec'ed phones without a stylus. Did LG find a way to make a cheap s-pen or Wacom stylus? Not at all. 

The LG stylus is actually passive and works on capacitance just like the stylus you can buy at the dollar store! Which is not to say it's useless. The LG stylus has a very sharp tip, roughly the size of a blunt pencil, so it's much, much more percise than those dollar store varieties which often are about as percise as a blunt crayon.

The "magic" if there is any, is that the Stylo needs much less capacitance to detect the tip location than most phones.  Maybe the hardware is better, or maybe they just tuned the software to respond at lower thresholds. Point in case, the stylus stylus does work on other phones, like my Samsung S7. But you have to push pretty hard to get enough signal. The experience is much better on the Stylo.

The downsides of LG's approach: no pressure sensitivity, and no palm rejection. The later is the bigger issue, since it means you can't rest your hand on the phone to steady your strokes. Since the stylus is quite slippery it can be hard to draw lines and shapes unless the phone is laying flat on a table. Gravity gets in the way if the phone is at any kind of significant angle. For just tapping, however, it's fine.

Typing in the lg sylo (3)

Typing on the 5.7 inch screen is a joy.  I was excited to use the stylus to type because I figured it would allow error free  letter selection, and indeed it does. But it turns out the extra half an inch over my Galaxy S7 means that 2 thumb typing works really, really well. Very few errors and quite fast. So I end up never using the stylus for typing.  A built in stylus would be more useful on a 5.0" screen. Anybody listening??

Interestingly it's almost possible to "touch type" on the Stylo,  meaning without looking at the keys. This also reduces error rates because you can see errors as they happen and can be sure to select the proper word suggestions. I've never been able to do that on another phone, and I suspect it's the screen size combined with my greater experience with Gboard.

Swiping works fine too, but it's completely unnecessary, unlike with a smaller phone. I never thought I'd want a screen this big but I'm starting to come around.

The one area it works very poorly is one hand typing. The screen is just too big to reach across with one thumb.  There are one-handed keyboards that stick the buttons in one corner, but I find it too much trouble to switch back and forth.

Lg stylo 3 stylus test and review

Given the main point of this phone is the stylus, it's criminal that the reviews don't really discuss how well it works.

The answer is pretty well. Here is a comparison of my best writing, and box with a dot inside-ing. Top is finger, bottom two are stylus, at two different angles of incline.

Note that for some shapes I find it much easier to use the stylus when the phone is laying flat on the table. Then you don't have to fight gravity. That is one notable downside to the stylus. No gliding resistance, and no good way to brace your hand. Makes drawing long straight lines surprisingly hard and fatiguing.