The big new buzzword in touchscreen phones is multitouch. First seen on the original iPhone, a load of handsets now support multitouch, including top-enders like the Palm Pre and, surprisingly, non-smartphones like the LG GD900 Crystal. It seems like, nowadays, cool = the ability to prod your screen with two fingers at once.
And to that, I reply, “No it’s not!”
‘Cool’ is the new technology that Synaptics have come up with, according to IntoMobile, where they’ve looked at multitouch devices, and clearly thought to themselves that if you’re using two fingers on screen at once, you’re not using enough fingers. So, they’ve come up with the Synaptics 3000 series screen. Two fingers on screen simultaneously? Nah. Three? Nope. Try being able to use ten fingers on screen simultaneously…
Yes, my first reaction when I saw it was to wonder why you’d need to use ten fingers at once on screen, too; or, more to the point, how it’s even possible to use ten fingers on screen at once, and still hold the phone.
I have to wonder if Synaptics know something we don’t about how the human hand is going to evolve in future…
Anyway, even if you’re using just three fingers, as he is in the demo video, it leads to some rather cool new ideas for gesture controls, since they’re all the rage now. For example, with the Palm Pre, it lets you do things like flinging apps off the top of the screen with an upward swipe to close them. Or, of course, there’s the infamous pinchy motion of an increasing number of phones, which lets you zoom in and out on things. Take a look at what Synaptics have come up with:
My favourite’s that ‘crumple’ gesture, where you use three fingers to scrunch up the screen, like you’re crushing a bit of paper to chuck it in the bin. That’s for closing apps. Or, there’s the one where you rub your finger across an item in a menu, just like you’re using a rubber (and if you’re reading this in America, I mean an eraser, not what you’re thinking…), which erases the thing you’re rubbing out from the menu.
In other words, clever stuff, and since it can support ten fingers at once, it’s perfectly designed for the day when alien tentacle beasts arrive and enslave us all…
Hey, it could happen…
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