Google Keep update will let you draw and doodle within your notes

For some years now, Samsung's Galaxy Note series devices have been the only smartphones to allow users to take handwritten notes out of the box. No, bundling a passive stylus with a midrange phone doesn't count, as the precision and response time is usually way off. Sure, it's a niche service, but for those who love to scribble notes, or even draw concept sketches on their smartphone – there wasn't much choice but Samsung's phablet.

Of course, various 3rd party styluses and accompanying apps have also been popping up for both Android and iOS, offering similar functionality, some apps even packing palm rejection features. Cool, indeed, but until 2015 neither Apple nor Google were offering a stock solution for handwritten note taking.

Well, this changes this year. With iOS 9, Apple updated the Notes app, adding some pretty useful features, such as checklist creation, copy / paste shortcuts, picture import, and handwriting. Thankfully, it Google's Keep isn't far behind! An update that is currently rolling out will allow users to doodle and scribble on Keep notes as they would on, say, S Note Action Memos.

This is a very welcome update for Samsung Note users who wish to consolidate all their notes in Google Keep, or other Android users who would love to scribble over their notes every once in a while – there are just certain things that you can't outline with print text, right?

If the new Keep hasn't hit your device yet – hang tight, the rollout is probably slowly engulfing the world. Alternatively, you could sideload the new .apks from the links below.