I could totally be wrong, but it actually just looked to me like a piece of tape to cover up writing, a label or logo or something. It would seem strange to me to remove the pen ability when they already have one similar device that has it. And, you would think the review would have mentioned if the main selling feature of the larger device was removed from the smaller version.

But fair question, and if that is in fact an input window, then it's no dice for me. I'm all about pen input.