Multi-touch on resistive touchscreens - possible, at least
Published by Steve Litchfield at 9:42 UTC, February 27th 2009
One thing which Rafe witnessed at MWC was Stantum's demonstrations of some insanely responsive multi-touch applets working on a standard resistive touchscreen. Leaving aside the demo applets (and also Rafe's own comments, he's still writing up MWC as we speak), then surely this type of technology is what Nokia should be building into its touchscreen phones, so that text input can be increased over the currently limited speeds? Demo and more below.
I've said several times that one of the problems of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is that text input using the virtual, full-screen keyboard is on the slow side, possibly slower than using predictive text on a standard hardware keypad. The two main problems are:
- There are no writing aids - Nokia needs to implement some kind of spelling correction, along the same lines as that on the Apple iPhone, which works brilliantly. At the moment, far too many miskeys are made, making the overall typing experience much slower.
- The use of a standard resistive screen means that one 'keypress' isn't registered unless you've completely lifted your finger from the previous one. This produces an unnecessary speed restriction. There are two solutions here:
- Rewrite the existing touchscreen drivers to intelligently parse through the points of contact such that the driver can selectively ignore/handle multiple concurrent screen presses, working on the unique presses when available. This would give a theoretical doubling in virtual keyboard input speed and could be implemented fairly easily in a new firmware build.
- Change the resistive screen technology as per Stantum's guidelines, to allow true all-pixels monitoring and true multi-touch. This would obviously only be for future hardware and could be years away, but still worth thinking about and doing.
Engadget did a good job of videoing the Stantum demos and this is embedded below, for your interest.
Steve Litchfield
Categories: Hardware, Links of Interest, Events
Platforms: General
News Discussion
Unregistered
Nokia 5800 resistive screen, brilliant for the incredibly low UK price (anyone tried the insanely accurate handwriting recognition on it?).
Next gen phones are on their way with newer touch technology and higher price tags.
Next gen phones are on their way with newer touch technology and higher price tags.
Unregistered
So is it possible to just update or replace the drivers of a Nokia 5800 to get multi-touch on it, or is it hardware based technology?
Rafe
There is a hardware component to the technology - it's not just software.
The demo was very impressive and certainly shows how things might develop.
The demo was very impressive and certainly shows how things might develop.
Unregistered
I thought Apple has been awarded a huge multi-touch patent in the USA. I am not sure what this means to all the future multi-touch phones. I know of Google has avoided using multi-touch in their Android phone. Instead a work-around solution is implemented.
Rafe
Its not multi-touch thats is patented rather it is the implementation of multi touch (i.e. how the software / hardware ties together) that tends to be what you can patent. Apple's comments on its patents should be taken with a inch of salt.
Unregistered
Wow. That looks awsome!
Now all they need is some way to raise individual sections of the touch screen, so you could make virtual buttons that you could feel without looking at the device.
Now all they need is some way to raise individual sections of the touch screen, so you could make virtual buttons that you could feel without looking at the device.
Unregistered
Raised areas of the screen could easily be done by small transparent braille-like dots to orientate the touch.
Unregistered
the nintendo ds already have multi touch though it's resistive touchscrn
Unregistered
Let's FINALLY lay to rest the notion that either a.) Apple invented multitouch or b.) That other phone manufacturers can't implement multitouch because of Apple patents.
NEITHER are true. There is LOADS of prior art in multitouch, in the US and elsewhere and the US patent office have shown their usual extreme stupidity and ignorance at awarding this patent.
As Rafe suggests multitouch is still perfectly possible and any manufacturer can either challenge Apple's patents (which are a house of cards legally I'd guess), or simply engineer around it, as per this solution.
By the way Android does have multitouch support built in, it's just not enabled. This was due to Apple asking Google to leave it out, and Google bending over and complying.
If Nokia have balls, they should just get on and implement multitouch - this article shows there is no reason not to, and it's a really useful feature.
NEITHER are true. There is LOADS of prior art in multitouch, in the US and elsewhere and the US patent office have shown their usual extreme stupidity and ignorance at awarding this patent.
As Rafe suggests multitouch is still perfectly possible and any manufacturer can either challenge Apple's patents (which are a house of cards legally I'd guess), or simply engineer around it, as per this solution.
By the way Android does have multitouch support built in, it's just not enabled. This was due to Apple asking Google to leave it out, and Google bending over and complying.
If Nokia have balls, they should just get on and implement multitouch - this article shows there is no reason not to, and it's a really useful feature.
Unregistered
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
If Nokia have balls, they should just get on and implement multitouch - this article shows there is no reason not to, and it's a really useful feature. |
Here is link if anyone is interested (and understand finnish or tolerates Googletranslate):
digitoday.fi/mobiili/2009/02/04/apple-ei-pelota-nokia-patentoinut-sata-kosketusnayttokeksintoa/20092645/66
And here's one link from that article to one multitouch patent:
wipo.int/pctdb/en/wads.jsp?IA=IB2003003605&LANGUAGE=EN&ID=id00000001 792114&VOL=43&DOC=005768&WO=05/022372&WEEK=10/2005&TYPE=A1&DOC_TYPE=PAMPH&PAGE=1
Unregistered
Sorry, it's apparently impossible to post webaddress without being registered member big post count.
Heres that other link again, add www after copy pasting.
wipo.int/pctdb/en/wads.jsp?IA=IB2003003605&LANGUAGE=EN&ID=id00000001 792114&VOL=43&DOC=005768&WO=05/022372&WEEK=10/2005&TYPE=A1&DOC_TYPE=PAMPH&PAGE=1
Heres that other link again, add www after copy pasting.
wipo.int/pctdb/en/wads.jsp?IA=IB2003003605&LANGUAGE=EN&ID=id00000001 792114&VOL=43&DOC=005768&WO=05/022372&WEEK=10/2005&TYPE=A1&DOC_TYPE=PAMPH&PAGE=1
Unregistered
I think apple has multi touch under heavy patents. not sure if it includes resistive touch but this my never get into the market if the patents are covering all grounds
Unregistered
> I think apple has multi touch under heavy patents. not sure if it includes resistive touch but this my never get into the market if the patents are covering all grounds
You really didn't read my comment above about this did you? ;-)
You really didn't read my comment above about this did you? ;-)
Unregistered
There's an interesting demo of multitouch running on a Nokia 5800 over at symbian-freak.com
Zuber
Zuber