Wacom reveals svelte RRFC capacitive touchscreen technology

Hold on to your touch panels, folks, as Wacom has just made known its plans to reveal "a major innovation in capacitive touchscreen technology" at next month's International Society for Information Display Exhibition. The tech, dubbed Reversing Ramped Field Capacitive (RRFC) touch, relies on "reversing ramped electro-static fields" to bring unprecedented precision and "drift-free performance" to touchscreen users. Reportedly, it can be integrated into dual-input applications with the firm's EMR pen-input solution or can operate on its lonesome on devices that require just a finger touch interface. Of course, there's way more pizazz to the whole thing than we can cover in this space, but feel free to don your nerd suit and hit the read link if you're thirsty for more.

[rony @ Apr 25th 2008 7:15AM]

hmm....a touchscreen that helps you to draw better....good improvement but less exciting than the fact that I posted first twice in a row.....wheeeeeee!!

[Esat Dedezade @ Apr 25th 2008 7:57AM]

Less exciting to YOU.

I think I speak for most people when no one else gives a flying rats @ss.

But hey whetever rocks your boat.

[Schfelzerberg @ Apr 25th 2008 7:16AM]

I wonder if this will be out to consumers soon. I'm looking to replacing my 3 year old Wacom Graphire 5. I just hope they offer a watered-down version at least at a price range between the Graphire and Intuos models.

[tekdroid @ Apr 25th 2008 7:49AM]

as far as I can tell this has nothing to do with Intuos or Graphire, but then again the vagueness of an announcement with no real-world implementation is possibly too much for me to make sense of.

To me this sounds like it could benefit future Cintiq and TabletPC (and related touchscreen) users. But I could be wrong.

[hexhunter @ Apr 25th 2008 7:25AM]

Hold on, does this mean they've made a Screen which responds to both touch and pen? So it makes a good iPod touch style stouch screen, but you can actually write on it?

If so, I hope HP take it up in their Tablets...

[kissarmy @ Apr 25th 2008 8:13AM]

The HP TX2000 series tablet PC touchscreen is Wacom Penabled and responds to both pen and touch.

[Steve A. @ Apr 25th 2008 1:21PM]

So does the Dell XT.

[wickedpheonix @ Apr 25th 2008 7:44AM]

Old - GottaBeMobile broke this on Tuesday - as reports the press release, 4/22.

However, like I posted on GBM - all I'm waiting for is this on a Lenovo X300 Tablet with Montevina ASAP for school next year and that's pretty much an ideal tablet for me =D Unfortunately, it looks like the X300T/X200T wouldn't be released until December, but I'm SO willing to wait - no way am I buying old tech that's going to be refreshed in a couple months in August.

[Ade @ Apr 25th 2008 7:47AM]

I saw DABS advertising these a month or two back. Nearly bought one until I saw the 2" QQVGA version is *puts pinky to lips* a million dollars. I want a 24" version for about £500 please.

[benjesuit @ Apr 25th 2008 8:14AM]

It spells the end of the grainy tablet screen. It's 95% transmissive as compared to the current 80%-85%.

[Matthew Guglietti @ Apr 25th 2008 9:01AM]

Yeah..Yeah..Life will be good!

[Brian @ Apr 25th 2008 4:02PM]

Very svelte....nice.

[Oyerinde Oyeesina @ May 5th 2008 6:09AM]

i havent used one
but i'm sure with all this hype its going to be a good product,
i'll always be a fan of Wacom's Products!

[Eduardo @ Apr 29th 2008 7:46PM]

when?

[carthik @ May 12th 2008 8:44AM]

Is there anyway, this can influence cintiq performance? they seem to only mention OEMs as prospective customers so i'm confused if i should wait for this tech to shape up or buy a cintiq 12WX next month.... :(