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Cypress touchscreens track hovering fingers, make devices even more 'magical' (video)
If you're reading this from a Samsung i8910 or Palm Pre, you're already holding a Cypress-powered touchscreen, but chances are you've never given it a thought. That's going to change, because this week the company demoed a killer app: TrueTouch screens that can detect fingers hovering over glass, not merely on it, allowing compatible software to finally register mouseover input. In other words, you won't actually need to touch new touchscreens to zoom in on text or perform certain commands. Cypress expects to have the tech ready in Q2, but first it might have some explaining to do -- we're pretty sure Apple successfully patented this very idea in January. Plus, KIRF iPhone? See it in action after the break.
Resistive HTC devices can have (pseudo) multitouch, too
"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.]
Sony Ericsson X10 can do multitouch after all, will get Android 2.1 in September?
So, was all that hubbub for nothing? British retailer mobiles.co.uk -- a wholly-owned subsidiary of giant Carphone Warehouse, for what it's worth -- is claiming a "man on the inside" as saying that the X10 actually can do multitouch after all, despite word from a Sony Ericsson product manager to the contrary. In fact, not only can it do multitouch, but it will do multitouch through a software update in the second half of the year, the source goes on to say. This all ties in nicely with the dude's claim that the X10 will see an official update to Android 2.1 in September, a window that dovetails rather nicely with Sony Ericsson's official line of 2H 2010. Of course, by the time September rolls around, we can only assume that Froyo will be alive and well, so the ultimate question of relevancy for Sony Ericsson's very first Android venture remains to be answered.
Multitouch pioneer Jazzmutant / Stantum makes cocky three finger pan from past to future of input
Before the iPhone, Microsoft Surface or even Jeff Han's famous 2006 demonstration at TED, a commercial multitouch display already existed. It's a customizable music control surface called the Jazzmutant Lemur, and it dates back to at least 2004. Under the new name Stantum, Jazzmutant's touchscreens continue to impress, and now that its groundbreaking original finally has a potential competitor in the iPad, company co-founder Guillaume Largillier has granted Create Digital Music a sizable interview to comment on the future of the technology. Amidst jabs at Apple for developing a solution only a "Neanderthal" could love, the co-founder hints that the $2000 Lemur might finally see a price drop, and that the company's decided to license their tech to other multitouch tablet manufacturers. Be sure to bring your table salt before hitting our source link, as the second half of the piece is an editorial very much in Stantum's favor, but you might hold off on the full pinch -- it's a pretty good read nonetheless.
Xperia X10 multitouch issue is hardware-related?
Sony Ericsson's flagship Android smartphone, the Xperia X10, has been plagued by laggy performance since we first laid eyes on it, but that won't always be the case; the company has confirmed repeatedly that upgrades (including a newer Android OS version) will come. However, it now seems that multitouch is not in the cards. "There's no multitouch in X10 – and I also can confirm that it's not only related to [software] but also to [hardware]," said product manager Rikard Skogberg at the official company blog. If true, that means the X10 won't get multitouch even when rooted, much less a Nexus One or Milestone-like level of native, official multitouch support. But remember, Sony Ericsson has fancy UI quirks of its own -- though you may never pinch-to-zoom on an X10, at least you can enjoy reticulating Splines. [Thanks, Björn R.]
Synaptics driver enables multitouch gestures on older trackpads
Haven't updated your laptop's trackpad driver lately? Then you may well want to consider doing so, at least if your laptop is equipped with a Synaptics trackpad. As a user on the Hardware Zone forums discovered, the latest Synaptics driver seems to enable multitouch gestures on older laptops that didn't previously support them, including two-finger scrolling, and three-finger click. What's more, while the drivers themselves come from HP, they should work just fine on other laptops with a Synaptics trackpad. Hit up the link below to try it out for yourself.
Hanvon's multitouch tablet previewed, surfaces in China March 25th with 1080p playback
Though cheap Android craptablets were a commodity item at CeBIT 2010, that doesn't mean we didn't find the occasional diamond in the rough. Specifically, the Hanvon Touchpad BC10C, a sleek, multitouch Windows 7 device with specs firmly entrenched in high-end netbook territory. Thanks to our friend jkkmobile, we now know exactly what's powering this thing -- a comparatively juice-gulping 1.3GHz Celeron M ULV 743 CPU and GMA4500 graphics -- and that when it comes to the US and Europe, it'll cost a little more than we thought, hovering around $877. Mind you, that price bump might be worth it when you consider just how smoothly the 10-inch tablet performs (peep 1080p video and Microsoft Surface Globe demos after the break) but also know your YouTube surfing sessions will be limited by a simply sad 3.5 hours of battery life. For when "mobile" isn't an important word in your vocabulary... the BC10C launches in China March 25th.
Pioneer DJM-2000 digital mixer sports multitouch screen, per-frequency mixing delight
Ready to graduate from DJ Hero? Got a house payment handy? Then Pioneer would like to show you the way to the pros. Say hello to the DJM-2000, a four-channel digital mixer built around a 5.8-inch multitouch screen and sporting enough knobs, buttons and sliders for a NASA launch sequence. Designed to play nice with the matching CDJ-2000 players Pioneer released last year, the unit features an integrated audio effects suite with six dedicated processors and several intriguing modes for multitouch music control. While the mixer has the traditional crossfade slider that allows DJs to assign a certain percentage of the output to channels on the left and right, the DJM-2000 debuts with "frequency mix," a mode that lets DJs assign within seven narrow frequency bands as well by manipulating virtual sliders on the touchscreen, and a "sidechain remix" mode that uses the screen to apply custom effects in real time. Yeah, it's not as wild as some other touchscreen DJ rigs we've seen, but at least this one's for sale: Pioneer says the mixer will retail for $3000 this June. Droolworthy video demonstrations after the break.
Nexus One's multitouch confused more easily than Droid's?
Thought all multitouch-capable displays were created equal? Think again -- Android and Me has posted a rather fascinating (if not somewhat depressing) video showing a demo multitouch app created by a game developer who'd grown suspicious after running into all sorts of trouble getting the feature to work the way he wanted on the Nexus One. First up, the Droid handles the demo with aplomb -- two thumbs are recognized smoothly and consistently. Next, though, the Nexus One gets confused after a while and starts registering presses at the wrong corners of the on-screen box formed by the placement of the thumbs. There's always hope that this could be fixed with a firmware bump, but that hope looks to be in jeopardy from language posted by a Google engineer in the official Android dev forums: "...this is how the touch screen hardware on the Nexus One works (which is essentially the same screen as on the G1 and myTouch). The Droid has a sensor from a different manufacturer, with different behavior. Other phones will likewise have different sensors." In other words, Google seems to think that HTC's just using a lower-quality sensor than Motorola is. That's good news for Droid owners, we suppose -- but with game development on Android still something of a non-starter, hardware issues like this keep fragmenting the user base and preventing big-name developers from jumping in and betting on the platform. Follow the break for video proof of the wackiness.
Hanvon TouchPad BC10C and BA10E hands-on
Remind us to send a thank-you note to Hanvon for taking a break from cranking out e-readers to work on some of the best tablets we've seen at CeBIT yet -- much more advanced that what was shown by the company back in September. While the TouchPad BC10C and BA10E didn't have any special software running on top of Windows 7 Home Premium, both of their 10.1-inch, capacitive multitouch displays were extremely responsive. The BA10E was the more aesthetically-pleasing of the duo, with a smooth grey bezel and a thin, lightweight body that was cool to the touch. If you hadn't guessed already, that beauty comes at a cost to processing speed, with just a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor inside. (Although the official specs list Windows XP and stylus input, as you can see in the video it was clearly using Windows 7 and multitouch -- the Atom CPU might also be an error, but the rep on hand couldn't say.) The BC10C, while bulkier, boasts an Intel Celeron chip -- a little more power, but we can't help but wonder how battery life would suffer. Hanvon told us these babies would run for about 500 euros, with release date currently unknown. You know the drill: gallery below, and video after the break. %Gallery-86929%
Apple granted patent on capacitive multitouch displays
It's not the mythical pinch-to-zoom patent, but the USPTO just granted a fairly broad Apple patent on capacitive multitouch displays. US Patent #7,663,607 describes a "transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches" by way of two sandwiched layers of conductive lines hooked up to an appropriate circuit, and also covers a specific type of multitouch display with a similar two-layer capacitive sensor made of glass. Now, there are certainly other types of capacitive sensors out there, so this isn't a total lockdown, but it's certainly one more arrow in Apple's patent quiver, and at the very least it should spur some interesting developments as competitors try to design around it. We'll see how it shakes down.
ASUS gets official with swivel-screen multitouch Eee PC T101MT
Thanks to the oh-so-revealing pages of the FCC, we already knew that ASUS had yet another multitouch-enabled Eee PC in the works, but there's just nothing quite like the satisfaction of seeing an official portal launched to celebrate the reality of being. The Eee PC T101MT is a swivel-screen netvertible that packs a 10.1-inch resistive multitouch display (1,024 x 600), Windows 7, up to 2GB of DDR2 memory, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a 160GB or 320GB hard drive, 0.3 megapixel webcam and a 6.5 hour battery. You'll also get a VGA output, a trio of USB 2.0 sockets, Ethernet audio in / out, an SD / SDHC / SDXC card reader (nice!) 500GB of internet-accessible ASUS WebStorage and your choice of white or black. Per usual, there's nary of a mention of a price or release date just yet, but you can check out what fun awaits you in the demonstration video just past the break. %Gallery-85452%
Motorola Droid gets official multitouch support -- in Google Maps, anyway
When it rains, it pours, huh, Google? Not even a week after announcing the big multitouch update for its own Nexus One, Google has turned loose a new version of Google Maps that enables pinch-to-zoom support on the Droid. Of course, it was no secret that Android 2.0 had the framework in place to support this kind of stuff -- Moto enabled it all by its lonesome on the Euro-spec Milestone -- but it looks like this could be the watershed moment where multitouch finally becomes a must-have feature on Android devices across the board, as Moto CEO Sanjay Jha recently suggested would happen. The new version 3.4's available as a software update in the Market right now, so grab it if you've got your Droid handy. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Apple granted patent for touch-sensitive bezel
The Patently Apple website is reporting that Apple has been granted patents dealing with tablets and advanced touch technology. The first patent concerns an 'intelligent bezel' where a user could control volume, brightness, zoom or even controls for games by sliding a finger along the edge of the device. A second patent was also granted for tracking multiple finger and palm recognition as hands approach, touch and slide across a multi-touch surface. Taken together, the patents hint that Apple is working on some very futuristic hardware and software platforms that go beyond the simple touch screens Apple offers now. When you look at the current iPad, you see a very wide bezel that has no touch functions now, but it is easy to imagine how a future tablet could incorporate the new features. Now, if they can just get a camera in there... [Via MacRumors]
Nexus One's big update can be had without the wait
Android's devised one of the slickest, most widely-deployed systems for delivering over-the-air operating system updates to smartphones, but there's a problem: you've got to wait until your carrier (or manufacturer) blesses you with them. They're typically deployed in rolling batches so that it's easier for the company to do one final test of the code's veracity and limit potential damage before sending it to a wider audience -- but where there's a will, there's a way, right? As is often the case with these things, some folks have found a way to get the Nexus One's glorious new multitouch code on the phone before Google's willing to give it to you, and for anyone who's done this before, it's a fairly standard-issue procedure: copy the update to the root of your microSD card, reboot into recovery mode, and apply the binary. We've tested the procedure and it works like a champ, so if you're feeling impatient, go ahead and pull the trigger -- we're going to go out on a limb here and say that the risk of bricking is pretty low. [Thanks, Jeremy]
Nexus One's unitouch browser falls victim to Cyanogen
Hey, Andy, thanks for "considering" adding multitouch to the Nexus One -- meanwhile, though, there are folks in the trenches actually making it happen, so we might not need your help anymore. The usual suspects over at xda-developers (the legendary Cyanogen, specifically) have mixed, baked, and cooled a delicious new Browser APK for Google's so-called superphone that undoes the company's poorly-made decision to leave out the hot-button feature on everyone's mind. The dude says that you might lose your settings and bookmarks in the process, but we'd say that's a small price to pay -- especially considering that you'd normally have to flash the entire ROM anyhow. Seriously though, Andy, just check it out for a few days and see what you think, alright? [Thanks, Owaeis]
Multitouch coming to 'majority' of future Motorola devices, says CEO
Native app multitouch, you say? It's a dream that most US Android users have failed to experience, but Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has let loose some promising words. In an interview with Laptop, he asserted that the company will be more proactive in getting the two-finger (or more) shuffle into its Google devices -- more specifically he said, "I think you will see us deliver multitouch in the majority of our devices going forward. There's a complex set of factors, not all of them technical." That last bit's pretty ominous, but nothing we haven't surmised before, and frankly, it all sounds a lot better than "we'll consider it." Also discussed in the interview is the inevitability of tablet experimentation, and the (un)likelihood of a Motoblur phone landing in Google's online store. "I think clearly the bias is towards Google Experience devices." Perhaps, but we'll be interested to see what HTC has to say about that.
Andy Rubin on multitouch in Android: 'I personally don't like two-handed operations'
In a very special CES edition of All Things D today, our own Joshua Topolsky had an opportunity to directly confront Google's Andy Rubin on the nagging multitouch issue -- not necessarily multitouch itself, but the growing disparity in support between American and European devices (the Droid / Milestone being the most famous example): "You call this a superphone -- 3.7-inch capacitive display, but no keyboard and no multitouch. Yet it has multitouch outside the US. Why not America?" Andy's reply: "It's not an America versus outside America kind of thing. It's a decision that is a result of the OEM model. I personally don't like two-handed operations... there is no conspiracy." That doesn't explain the fact that the European Nexus One seems to have some in-built multitouch enabled -- nor does it explain why any manufacturer would ever opt to exclude it under any circumstances unless there's some outside pressure involved. Surely Rubin's personal preferences don't play into this... right? Right, Google?
Surprise, surprise: HTC's Euro-spec Nexus One does multitouch
Alright, Google, we get it: you hate America. That's the only conclusion we can reach for why the company's last two Android version hero devices -- the Droid for 2.0 and the Nexus One for 2.1 -- have mysteriously opted to exclude multitouch support in the phone's in-built apps (despite retaining support in third-party downloads). As we all know, the European Milestone adds that functionality back in, and it seems that the European version of the Nexus One (which'll be offered by Vodafone) is getting the same boost. We say this because a phone being passed around to Germany's Heise has pinch zooming enabled -- very likely the same stuff Voda will have on offer when it starts selling the phone in the coming weeks. That's fine, Google, whatever, we hate gestures anyway. Hate 'em. Update: According to a Google employee on a Google Mobile help page, the phone shipping to European markets will be no different than the one here in the US. We're not sure we entirely buy that, but we'll get to the bottom of this before long. [Thanks, Philipp, John]
Rubin on adding multitouch to the Nexus One: 'we'll consider it'
Google and its partners have a track record of being clear as mud about their intentions regarding multitouch -- they're obviously all dancing around the issue, but there's definitely some logic (probably legal logic, but logic nonetheless) behind which devices are getting it in which markets. Notably lacking multitouch, though is the flagship Nexus One -- an odd device for Google to fail to pimp out in every conceivable way, we'd argue. Our man on the ground in Mountain View today pressed Android chief Andy Rubin on the matter today, asking whether we might see multitouch in a future Nexus One software update: "we'll consider it." That's all we could get out of him, suggesting this is still very much a sensitive subject -- but at least we have some confirmation that it's a software limitation alone, so if nothing else, this'll get hacked every which way within a few days of release.
