Cypress touchscreens track hovering fingers, make devices even more 'magical' (video)
By Sean Hollister 
posted April 23rd 2010 3:22AM
posted April 23rd 2010 3:22AM
posted April 23rd 2010 3:22AM
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...yeah but you can't see through your finger to see the magnified text. I love the technology but I'm to near-sighted apparently to see the benefits.
@clee100
I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to have a pixel offset
@Eli Haj I gotta say, however, that if you had a company that came up with great ideas you would patent them also. p.s. I don't own any apple products.
if it requires users to touch the screen.......they blew it.
btw, someone tell this guy to cut his nails.
@ummmwhat as someone who as bit his nails since he had teeth I was actually admiring his.
@clee100
he probably used them as a stylus on other screens....And don't bite your nails, it will destroy your teeth over time.
That's not a lot of space between your finger and your screen... People's nerves and instincts will touch the screen like the demonstrator did before touch the surface.
However I will remain optimistic and see where this goes.
@groovedafied
My thoughts exactly. Hovering slightly above something with any sort of reliability is not exactly a common skill.
Really great. I have used the active wacom tablets and the most important part of the experience is the hover detection.
@sbmkvp so what you are saying is that there is "prior art"? So Apple's patents will never stand a serious challenge?
@tmarks11 No No. I was talking about the stylus based tablets... which can be hovered to move the cursor and can be touched for click (or by pressing a button - useful in playing FPS). I was saying if the same thing was implemented with finger based inputs then it would be great.
@sbmkvp
The Bamboo tablet actually allows hovering using fingers, and it's released BEFORE Apple got the patent.
you see that...
i saw that smirk, haha someones excited they have actually something better than iphones or htcs multi-touch
So apple gets to claim credit for this too? Someone needs to come up with something so far beyond what any of them have conceived of to shut them up. My vote goes to direct thought commands sent from the brain.
@tybert7
It's probably patented by Apple already. No matter that they can't do it or how ridiculously broad the "idea" is, they will sue you if you can make it work first.
@shishi Actually, Apple might already have this patent. Back when I was in college, I was in a focus group with other students where Apple asked us what we thought about using our thoughts to control a computer. We did fake demonstrations where I read aloud my thoughts and someone would control the computer in order to simulate how thought control might feel like. I always wondered what happened to this experiment...
@clee100 I wouldn't.
@mogren I promise you will rush to a patent attorney if you ever get a whiff of proprietary money; guarentee it.
@saramolly See you in oblivion.
Has Apple demonstrated the ability to detect a hovering finger? If not, how can they patent the technology? I would think that detecting a hovering finger fails the "non-obvious" test. However, it is probably difficult to implement, so it should be able to patent different methods of doing the detection.
@Eli Haj by the way, I completely agree with you.
"If you're reading this from a Samsung i8910 or Palm Pre"
I am...soo...
mrtatertot,
EXACTLY my friend. That's my point against this patent-trolling. Apparently I can watch a bunch of sci-fi movies and patent a bunch of ideas. Here are some: holographic interface in a mobile device, synapse control, retinal tracking. etc., etc. Get all these patents before me or anybody can possibly get the actual tech working, then "sue" whoever does it first. That's your patent troll -- we know who -- at work: 5% R&D, 95% lawyering.
@clee100
Here's the thing though...
I don't know if I'm wrong about this, but I doubt Apple can have a patent just on a simple general idea. Unless they specifically state the way this would be implemented (in terms of what types of sensors are being used and how they work), then I don't think they can sue every proximity-sensing screen technology made by others. Unless the underlying technology is the same, then they wouldn't have the grounds (IMO). I don't know what kind of description that patent offers, but it would be wrong to simply grant them a patent for the idea... an idea that was probably in the minds of many touchscreen makers or UI designers
This is perfect for Adobe flash applications. There are couple of reasons why flash based applications don't work on mobile devices, but I think one of the major reason is most flash applications are designed with a mouse as an input device in mind.
I mean a mouse cursor and a click input.
This hover tracking can be served as a mouse cursor and touch can be served as a click input.
I think this technology might help out Adobe to defeat Apple's plan to get flash complete out of mobile devices.
**As long as Adobe fixes bugs and optimize its codes**
@eck303 More than that, the absence of this in existing touchscreen devices is why Flash is currently a complete and utter non sequitur outside of the traditional mouse-and-keyboard paradigm. I don't understand why people have been clamoring for it anyway, except that it's a buzzword bullet point that they can't have yet. If "90% of the web" incorporates Flash, as many have suggested, that means that even if all the *conscientious* Flash developers in the world update their stuff to be touch-friendly, 89.9% of the web (at least, the Flash content on it) is still gonna be unusable without a mouse until screen tech like that mentioned in this article rolls around. And that's completely separate from Adobe's abysmal track record in any kind of non-desktop-Windows development making dependence on Flash a bad idea in general. (Now bring on the downranks for not worshipping at the Adobe altar.)
@Teslanaut
I actually look at downranked comments before others
Even though it isn't actually implemented sometimes my palm pre rarely selects things my finger hovers over for a while. Now I know why.
Invest in Cypress stooooock- now.
You're welcome. You're now rich. PAY IT FORWARD, BABY.
I work at CVS, and our touchscreen java based software does the same thing, and that thing is pretty old. I noticed it one day when I was working and was in the middle of a transaction and went to hit a button and decided not to at the last second and it activated itself. I am convinced that those IBM monitors are some odd resistive and capacitative combo.
wait, if the tech's already available before the patent, wouldn't that make it prior art?
unless apple can prove that they had a working prototype ready before cypress...
@Itami
Same here haha the sent to oblivion technique is just as great as Kotaku's disemvoweling.
DAM APPLE!
Some one needs to do something about the US Patent Laws. This is ridiculous. But anyhow, apple should have built this on the Max-iPad. Would have made it cooler.
This is just a hyper sensitive capacitive screen. Current touch inputs are capable of this, and have been tuned so that your finger has to get close enough to make contact with the glass (touching the glass itself does nothing on a capacitive screen, it is just something you can mush your finger against. Personally I hate it when I am hovering over something ready to tap it and my phone picks up on it. Hovering is cool and all but their needs to be some way to detect that you are committing to the action, as a Wacom digitizer does, it has separate behavior for hovering vs. tapping.
@RandomGuy The thing about the Wacom tablets is that it's the tablet that detects proximity and location, but the pen that detects an actual touch event. If you have one of your own, try getting the pen close enough for the tablet to start tracking it, then press on the nib with your finger. It'll behave as if you plonked it down on the tablet's surface. Obviously, our fingers have no such mechanism, so...I dunno, would it be possible to detect different *levels* of proximity, and only do hovering interaction until it rose past a certain threshold?
@Shunnabunich Oh, and if Cypress is confident enough to begin releasing PR about this, they've probably solved that problem already. I'm sure they realize as well as anyone that simply registering full-on touch events upon hover is not going to make for a usable UI.
Who gives a rats ass if Apple patented the idea. They don't even have a working freakin' prototype to show but they have the idea? This is absolute horseshit. Seriously the USPTO is broken beyond repair and this is just another example of how. I have an "idea" I think I will patent "idea patents". This patent thing is plain getting stupid at this point.
You can market this in the ghetto as a pay as you go phone so Shaquita Jackson and her 1 inch press on nails can finally use a touch screen phone!!!
@Eli Haj
"we're pretty sure Apple successfully patented this very idea in January"
Engadget Staff we all know that Apple patents everything in the universe even if there was an original creator. They don't give a crap if the technology exist, I guess they figure they could always settle or buy the company with the patent.
@Eli Haj Apple could only sue Cypress for "magical" and "unicorn" Integrate in its products.
"DAM APPLE!
Some one needs to do something about the US Patent Laws. This is ridiculous. "
OK, for the record, you cannot get a patent on an idea. Engadget screwed up again, which is about par for the course when they write patent related posts. So before you blame the patent system, how about doing a little bit of critical thinking to figure out if what's being said is true or false? All patent documents are in the public domain, so whoever wants to read exactly what the patents cover can do so quickly and easily instead of making baseless, fear-induced statements.
@Eli Haj Well, the Patent system = consumers loss.
It seems that the patent system was created to protect the small individual inventor from the larger companies. And in that, fantastic. Yet somehow it turned into something where you just patent everything you see on star trek and any other sci-fi show. No need to ever even attempt to build anything either.
Someone has probably filed patents on crazy things like "warp drives".
I am starting to think that you should not be able to patent anything until you have a fully working prototype. And THEN you patent only last 2 years until you produce said object for sale or distribution. If you do, your patent remains valid. Any "invention" not produced for more than 2 years becomes public domain.
Pretty damn simple. Protect people who invent and sell something. If you sit on it, you loose it.
@clee100
Its one thing to have an idea, its a whole other thing to actually follow through that idea and make an actual product that does exactly that. Hell I've had this idea for years now, but that doesnt mean I should be able to patient it and sue anyone who tries to make it into a real product (something I wouldnt be able to do).
Patient shouldnt be granted to just ideas if there is no prototype showing they can make it work. Of corse there should be some instances where they are allowed, but not for thing like this.
.....now Im not too familiar with the patient system, so if I said something wrong, let me know.
@Eli Haj : The Moving Finger writes;
Another crappy idea brought to life.
Does anybody ever consider how REAL people use touch devices before they do these things or yell out "Yea!"?? Hovering will mean that you can't use the device one-handed, because when you use your thumb to one-hand you operate much closer to the screen than the equivalent two-handed user. Therefore, the system will constantly interpret your very close thumb as "hovering"...and you'll get results you really didn't want nor expect.
This means that you will be mostly using the device as two-handed. Note that the device in the demo is always stationary and semi-distant, a la two-handed use? Got a bit of a clue there??
@Eli Haj
Apple's patent was based on gesture detection using the phone camera. I do not think they are using a camera here.
@vikrantt oops mistake... that was another patent! Damn Apple.
why does apple seem to have thousands of patents that are simply things that already exist on desktops, graphics tables, etc. and all they do is add "on a touchscreen" to the end of the description. wacoms have had this ability for well over a decade.
@evildoer
Wacom uses a different type of proximity tech that wouldn't infringe on this patent. Also, even if it did, Wacom has prior art.
Crap idea.
If anyone has used a Wacom tablet the fact that before your pen touches the pad the cursor will move as you hover 1/4" over the pad is such a weird feeling one cannot get used to. I'd hate that on a touchscreen device. But as long as it's an option.