Thinking about how your phone's touchscreen operates, you might assume that the so-called optical pads that have been making appearances on
recent BlackBerrys (
among other devices) operate in a similar fashion -- but you'd be wrong. RIM's official BlackBerry blog is chiming in today to drop some knowledge on us dullards, and it turns out that "optical" isn't just a cute nickname -- the pads do actually operate in much the same way as modern desktop mice, using a low-res infrared camera to capture movement across the surface and translate it into movement. In practical terms, what this means is that you don't need a conductive surface to operate the pad -- you can use pretty much anything that the sensor can see, so a gloved hand (for instance) is theoretically good to go. That being said, don't expect to be snapping photos with your "camera" any time soon -- we're literally talking about a handful of grayscale pixels here, which should make it only marginally better than the
Droid's cam.
posted December 18th 2009 1:43PM
Thanks Chris for today's lesson.
@ashleythehottiest
It's wintertime... not having to take off your gloves would be great!
Sure would be a nice touch for my ipod touch too
@Bourne Perfection
and the future of butt-dialing is secured...
@(Unverified)
oh and now they can operate your phone with a laser bounced off a mirror like that one movie and then send themselves all yur goodies...
Eye can see you! Thats pretty cool that it'll work without a conductive surface, thats the one thing I don't like about capacitive touch surfaces.
It's just like an optical mouse. Haven't any of you ever leaned back in your desk chair with mouse in hand and operate the computer with a finger over the optical sensor of your mouse because you're tired? Am I really getting that old that I remember non-optical mice? Was this being how blackberries worked really that non-obvious?
Ouch @ the shot at the droid...
You sure that's a thumb?
So all those of us who have sanded or chemically burned off our fingerprints are once again screwed? *sigh* It's so hard being a fugitive from justice.
@CRA1G It's not a biometric fingerprint scanner. Turn your mouse upside down and practice to get a better idea of what the article is talking about.
@Martin C But I still use a mouse with balls...
@CRA1G
you know... fugitives are more likely to get caught when they don't RTFA.
@Simon Seize I did RTFA and saw "Fingerprint Ridge" on the diagram.
Were you too hot and bothered by the perceived need to leave a smart-ass reply to some random person's comment that you failed to notice it yourself, or did you merely run out of your sense-of-humor pills this morning and believe my comment to be a serious attempt at critiquing the technology?
@CRA1G
all you had to read was the part that stated "...a gloved hand (for instance) is theoretically good to go"
I thought problems with the Droid's cam were just caused by that bug which has since been solved. Or do you mean the Droids cam from a month ago?
@MarcusMaximus I'm still using a droid (on 2.0.1), and I've gotta be honest, it's the worst 5MP phone cam I've ever used.
@Chris Ziegler The video isn't to shabby, a step up from my Storm/Tour for sure but I agree the still are hit or miss. How hard can it be to put a decent still cam on a phone these days?
@Chris Ziegler Oh, didn't realize it was deeper than that. When that bug was fixed, everyone made it sound like the camera was perfect and I've never actually seen a live Droid in real life. Well, I feel good about holding out for the Nexus One now.
@Chris Ziegler: A camera is only as good as its lens. You can have a 30MP camera shooting through a piece of plastic, and it's going to look like crap.
@Shadyman Lens and the sensor. Not sensor size but sensor quality.
"we're literally talking about a handful of grayscale pixels here"
Yet on that article picture it can detect individual ridges of a fingerprint, over 7 or more pixels, so put a lens in front of it to focus an image onto it and you'd get a picture I'd say, or put a barcode on it and it can read it, all depending on software hacks (and maybe some hardware hacks) of course.
How many 5 MP phone cams have you used exactly?
How r they gona manage to put it into such a small space as a phone's screen? On the scheme it doesn't seem to be that conveniently small.
ive literally known this from the very second i held my 9700 in my hands. if you look at it at an angle you can see that the trackpad has that same pseudo clearness that the business end of a remote control has. has a slight red/purple tinge to it.
i.e. the trackpad itself is just a shell
"we're literally talking about a handful of grayscale pixels here"
Yet again, misuse of the word 'literally'. You cannot have a handful of pixels. That doesn't make any sense.
@boggit well, i mean you can have a handful of pixels. but not literally have a handful of pixels.
@boggit
In this context literal refers to a number. The number equal to a handful. A handful is not relative to the actual number of the referenced objects that would fit in a persons hand, but a small number, like "a few". So I disagree with you. The term literally is used correctly in this context to mean not very many, especially considering the typical size of the object referenced (a pixel) and the number one usually encounters in a group of them (more than a few).
So there are literally only a few of pixels in this sensor.
@travelfeet
"In this context literal refers to a number."
No, if it uses the word literal in a sentence then it is to be taken literally, and you cannot have a handful of pixels thus the word is misused.
@boggit No matter who wins this argument, we all lose.
@boggit
handful
n noun (plural handfuls)
1 a quantity that fills the hand. ->a small number or amount.
@Wwhat
there is no known amount of pixels that will "fill a hand" -> undetermined number or amount
Just curious... if it's an optical scanner, what happens if it's used in darkness, or bright lights? I'd think that if it were used in very bright sunlight, it'd have a hard time differentiating the patterns.
@AwayBBL
Once you put your finger on it to use it I expect it would maybe perhaps block the sunlight..
Really, you guys didn't already know this?
@TWiz
Yeah, I don't want to sound as if we're know-it-alls but I've known this since day one - the word 'optical' kind of gives it away.
any way they could implement this into a touch screen? would be nice to multi tiuch with gloves and retain the accuracy that captive screens have over resistive ones.
Can someone make some software to use this as a fingerprint scanner?
That's no thumb, that's a personal massage tool or marital aide.
Apparently there are alot of gardeners at RIM
How is this any different than the one on my Samsung Omnia?
@stuffman Its thr same thing.
This looks like it could possibly recognise more than one finger/object/touch at a time.
@monkfishbandana Wasnt it there in samsung innov8, e72?
Optical trackpads means it can see something and it always used an ir sensor nothing new. Sadly at engaged, they just learnt it today.
Wasnt it there in samsung innov8, e72?
Optical trackpads means it can see something and it always used an ir sensor nothing new. Sadly at engaged, they just learnt it today.
Omg, why does everyone keep bashing droid's camera. my phone has a 1.3mp cam, while the droid's has a 5mp cam, what the fuck are you guys expecting?! a dslr to be built in there?