Touchscreens to get finger friendly
Haptic humping points the way
Haptic technologies are so advanced these days that we will soon see feel touchscreen displays make physical buttons appear and disappear when needed.
Well, those are the claims of Tactus Technology, which has such a product in the works that it hopes to see fitted in devices as early as next year.
The company utilises microfluidic technology to create a "tactile layer", able to make buttons rise when called upon. Gobsmacking.
This means we might see handsets that utilise both a huge touchscreen, as well as physical buttons which use haptic feedback to give the feeling they are actually being pressed. Perhaps we'll see a reinvigoration of physical Qwerty phones going forward.
The tech was on show at industry exhibition SID Display Week 2012 in Boston this week. Check out the demonstration video below.
Earlier this year special haptic technologies were said to be fitted in Apple's upcoming iPad, rumours that turned out to be wide of the mark.
However with such concepts fast becoming a viable option, future developments in touchscreen tech will soon be at our fingertips. ®
COMMENTS
Fair points well made; the more I think about it the more I think I may have jumped the gun in dissing it. I still don't think it's right for phones though; maybe for slates or those fancy laptops that have a touchscreen where you expect a keyboard. If they can prove me wrong and sort out a phone that works well with it, more power to 'em.
Need an icon for looking sheepish after an overreaction.
I couldn't have more opposite thoughts to you on this: being able to truly touch-type on my Sensation would be amazing! I'm making the assumption here that the capacitive sensing is disabled while the "keys" are protruding.
Unless I'm mistaken, the "moving parts" is actually just a slight expansion of some fluid when an electrical charge is applied, so battery drain should be pretty minimal; probably less than the existing moving part: vibration.
Haptically ribbed for her pleasure.
(I'm claiming first dibs on this tag line)
Very Skeptical
If they could summon and dismiss buttons on the screen at will, and without messing up the display, that would indeed be very impressive, and probably even useful. But I'm suspicious that all we're seeing is a very crude mock-up that can't do anything close to that. Notice how the buttons always appear and disappear all at once, as if they can't even be controlled individually. I suspect its something embarrassingly simple like a single rigid plastic frame with holes covered by a membrane and oil behind it. Okay, raising buttons in an all-or-noting fashion in predefined positions could still be useful, I guess. But the final flaw, is that the buttons would be visible even when unraised, making it unsuitable for displaying any other type of content there. So basically, you might as well just use physical keys.
Of course it's possible they've got something way better than that, but why wouldn't they show off its full abilities then?
