Resistive HTC devices can have (pseudo) multitouch, too
By Sean Hollister 
posted April 20th 2010 3:22PM
posted April 20th 2010 3:22PM
"Multitouch on a resistive screen?" We must be joking, right? Not at all -- if we've learned anything from our encounters with a little firm named Stantum, resistive multitouch is not only possible, but potentially preferable to its capacitive counterpart. Of course, that knowledge doesn't help you any if you're currently stuck with single finger commands, but if your phone is made by HTC and running Windows Mobile, you may one day get to see what two digit input feels like. Adel Al Zubeir figured out that when two fingers are placed on a single-touch screen, the digitizer reads the spot between the two... and with a little bit of math, he cooked up a program that can figure out the relative position of both fingers to allow vaguely useful pinch-to-zoom and other dual-touch gestures. Sadly, you can't just drop this onto your phone to instantly enable the tech a la Cyanogen, but if you develop for WinMo, you can start building functionality into your apps with the beta SDK at our source link. Early proof-of-concept video after the break.[Thanks, David C.]
Sorry to hijack this thread but did Engadget nuke Gizmodo? It appears to be offline?
@BurtonBytes
No. Giz is still up.
@BurtonBytes
Giz works fine for me, I think they disabled comments though?
Not sure how I feel about how they handled the whole iPhone 4 thing though...seems real shady.
On a related note, this doesn't help my Omnia suck any less :(
@BurtonBytes
back on subject....
this is cool too see. sadly i ditched winmo, but i see this as having nice potential. winmo/htc/resistive - thats a pretty big gathering.
props to the creator, maybe you'll get a call from htc...
@BurtonBytes been working for me
@BurtonBytes
Giz is going through political suicide right now for posting an iPhone 4G programmer's personal information online. Buy stock in Engadget.
@andthemaniam -- yes how dare they irk the mighty Jobs and his happy minions of Ap-fanatics
@BurtonBytes
I'm glad that Giz is calling out that drunken fool...
Think of the peeps with Applet stock?
where is my money you punk!?
Thats what you get for posting PUBLIC INFO on whorebook and TWITer
@AppleDrank
It wasn't his fault that all of the information got posted, if I recall correctly; a "journalist" (and I must stress those air quotes) at Gizmodo posted all of the information, and then proceeded to sell out the guy who lost the phone (my guess is that he lost the phone accidentally) and because of them; Apple share price is down, and the "journalist" has essentially ruined someones career for making an innocent mistake.
@Professor Hubert J Farnsworth
I just read through the whole saga and I was pretty disgusted to see the engineer's name, screenshot of his facebook profile, his twitter account all on gizmodo. There's a reason I stopped going over there a couple months ago, this is stupidity. Hope they catch hell for it, keyboard warriors.
THIS IS COOL
@mikemanblah
HTC should update this in their old phones. Math!
what the hell... I've been saying this for years. So freakin' obvious.
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=33569
@mikemanblah
It should be noted though that there are some limitations with this implementation. You must keep the first contact point (first finger) stationary. That is because when two finger are pressed simultaneously the point between them is registered. The method illustrated in the article assumes that you are going to first press with a finger and keep it stationary and then press with a second finger and move it (to zoom in or out). By doing so, the middle point which is registered is used to calculate the position of the second finger assuming that the first one did not move.
If the first finger actually moves (for example: the same distance as the second and in the opposite direction) then the registered middle point will no move and there wouldn't be anyway to figure out how much you have pinched and so how much it should zoom.
@mikemanblah
your insight is vast and grand, thanks.
Yay multitouch, i guess!
@mikemanblah
I totally thought of this a few years ago. Anyone who has used a resistive screen can tell that using two fingers gives the point in the middle. After that, all you have to do is look for a voltage or response difference when multiple fingers are used.
Finally my htc touch pro 2 can multitouch
Are we supposed to be ignoring the fact that it doesn't recognize his thumb in the first few seconds? That's the biggest issue with resistive touch, that you generally need heavy pressure or to be using a hard object to consistently get it to recognize, and the fact that he has this issue in the first few seconds of his demo video seems pretty disconcerting to me.
Sorry, I should clarify that I know this is only a software solution anyway that doesn't really improve the screen itself, but Engadget is saying that they think a multitouch resistive would be potentially better. I see absolutely no evidence for that.
@jhoff80
That's odd. I almost always use the pad of my finger on my Fuze and it registers the touch as much as my iPhone does.
Remember, this is a beta application, and one that is running on top of the OS, not as a part of it. It probably has more to do with the fact that the device is lagging since the code is relatively rough.
@jhoff80
Sadly Touchco was bought by Amazon and has taken down it's video demonstration of resistive multi touch. It was really impressive as it was capable of registering a nearly unlimited number of input objects (most likely fingers) simultaniously, plus it could tell if you were using a pen and would ignore the rest of your hand.
So as far as this technology is concerned: it is WAY better than capacitive.
@jhoff80
"...Engadget is saying that they think a multitouch resistive would be potentially better. I see absolutely no evidence..."
I think they mean better in the precision/ accuracy sense, which will be possible only w/ the 'hybrid' multitouch resistive screens using Stantum's technology; not w/ the current crop. If you haven't, take a look at the Stantum video link above.
Pretty slick I must admit.
@Mike Vick
And yes I am pretty
@Slick
Nice reply +1 LOL
Surely this isn't the first time someone figured this out?
Open up solitaire in WinMo - drag a card to the right side of the screen with your right pinkie nail, then place your left pinkie nail on the left side - the card moves to the center - two fingers recognized
@Slick
Yeah, while we're on the subject, I've seen a few DS games that have used the faked multitouch as well. Trace Memory had a section where you had to hit two light-switches at the same time for example, that just really used the area directly between the two as the input to fake being multitouch on a resistive display.
@Slick All resistive screens do that, for all apps. The trick is actually utilizing that midpoint, as the dev in the article does, and as the DS game referenced by the person above me does.
Props to the guys at xda where would be without them, xda is the best community on the web.
HTC could have done this from _day_one_ but they choose not to.
Cool!, just like the iphone Os 4.0 which will have (Psuedo) multitasking ?
"...but if you develop for WinMo, you can start building functionality into your apps..."
*sigh
Multitouch on mobile phones is seriously over-rated...
Seriously? Take a look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNTsIut1h98 Posted loooong time ago.
I have also discovered much more interesting use case for this, will post soon.
This has some fundamental flaws regarding pinch-to-zoom that the video conveniently skips over.
Because you're averaging the position of the two fingers, if you do multi-touch zoom in the intuitive way -- that is, moving both fingers apart or together at the same speed, centred on the object you want to zoom in or out from -- the average point stays in the same position, and this method will not detect anything.
Note that the video shows a use case where one finger stays in the same place whilst the other moves -- this is far less intuitive.
So basically you put the first finger down as the "pivot" and then use the second finger to zoom or rotate or whatever. Seems pretty simple, but very different than what most people are used to with these gestures. It's still no substitute for an actual multi-touch display.
btw
pseudo is old greek and stands simply for "want to be"
IT"S NO GOOD !!!!
Multitouch is great if your software is designed for it. Windows Mobile was never designed for multitouch. The WinMo apps were never designed for multitouch. It will cause trouble.
Well maybe this will get people who are always down on resistive touchscreens to lighten up. And what ever happened to the technology that guy that did the TED demo had come up with? If I remember it didn't matter what time of touchscreen...
Why are we pushing for all screens to work the same way?
I used to have a Nokia 5800 (which has a resistive screen) and it was great. I really like the AMOLED screen of my new phone because it is much bigger, but I sure miss the accuracy of my Nokia 5800: I could select any spot on the screen with great accuracy using my fingernail or stylus.
Multitouch is such a niche feature... never used it really...
This isn't so hard. If you notice he isn't moving his index finger. The program is just detecting the movement of that spot in the middle and enlarging the picture based on it.
HTC is rocking so hardcore right now! Color me a fanboi! :D
are u kidding me with this post? the nokia 5800 had a game that utilized this concept over a year ago. actually this "pseudo multitouch" has existed even before that. this is years old news.
why HTC only?
they using some special kind of resistive screen?
what about other winmo devices?
i'd like multi-touch for the on-screen keyboard, all these zooming, rotation stuff aren't that useful...
this is nice since i actually prefer resistive screens to capacative ones. i really don't see all the "added precision" when i use my friends iPhones, Pres, and Droids. i mainly like being able to use both my fingertip and my finger nail which i feel adds another layer of precision. looking forward to what they do with this since i would gladly welcome multitouch to my TP2.
this is old...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dC2qpDsgZU
and this is the app: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDJPBnSv0wc
And the N900 in January http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNTsIut1h98