Galaxy Note 8's coolest S Pen stylus tricks

Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 is packed with some of the best technology you can find in a phone. It's the stylus -- or S Pen, as Samsung calls it -- that makes it stand out from the crowd, though.

Click through to see some of the great tricks you can perform using the stylus.

First up, an existing feature, but one I've found incredibly handy on previous devices: the ability to take a screenshot and immediately annotate it. Ideal for highlighting a sentence on a web page or drawing directions on a section of map.

One neat new feature is called Live Memo. In a message, you can draw a reply, which will be turned into an animated GIF for your friend to watch.

It can be seen just as a bit of fun, but it's also handy to take a screenshot of a map and draw a route on it to send -- when they watch the GIF, they'll be able to see the exact route they need to take. 

Note users have already been able to make quick notes when the screen is off, but the Note 8 expands that by allowing you to create up to 100 pages of 'Screen Off Memos'.

It's great for jotting down your shopping list, for example. 

The translate tool is new for the Note 8 and it's really cool.

With this mode enabled, you can hover the S Pen over a word in a sentence and, using Google's translation skills, it'll show you the word in the language of your choice as a pop-up. 

You can also select entire sentences to translate. In my brief hands-on time, I found the feature worked well.

The Pen Up app satisfies the cravings you've had since you were a kid to colour things in. There's a range of outline drawings to choose from and you can sketch in colour, or automatically fill blocks in the picture to build up all the colours. 

The stylus itself has seen some upgrades. The nib is finer than before and it has 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. Samsung says that makes it feel much more like writing with a real pen. 

I certainly found it very comfortable to make quick notes, although the small size of the pen still means I probably wouldn't want to hand-write entire emails.

When you pull the stylus out, you'll have access to this wheel of actions to perform. It makes it really easy to quickly write a note or use the new translation tool.

Another existing feature I really like is the ability to screenshot a specific part of the screen to save and send to someone. 

Watch the S Pen's new tricks in action and read CNET's Samsung Galaxy Note 8 first look.