Will the future trend of touch screen technology be full-screen multi-touch?

introduction

Most products on the market today, while effective, primarily treat the user's sense of sight and touch as separate by nature. From simple buttons or keys on computer keyboards, cell phone keyboards, MP3 players, home appliances, and even TV remote controls to more advanced click and scroll features on volume sliders, wheels, and track pads, the output location (that is, the result of the user's input or manipulation action) is distinct from the user's input location. This consistency of sight and touch is the fundamental advantage of touchscreens.

It's easy to say that bringing vision and touch together is a profound technological breakthrough that will completely change the way users interact with electronic products (some call it a revolution in user interfaces). The transparent nature of touch screens allows users to "touch" different content displayed on the display directly. Instead of searching for buttons on the periphery of electronic devices, such as computer mice or keyboards or even dial buttons on mobile phones, users can interact directly with applications that are solidified in the "brain" of the device (its operating system). This is a revolutionary change that allows users to directly control powerful operating systems and applications, all at the user's fingertips.

Of course, we can use the mouse and trackpad on the computer screen to access applications, but this kind of control is not directly touching the display, and it does not allow users to integrate with the screen and embedded applications. We can actually use the touch screen through various control movements or gestures that we can imagine, making the display vivid and vivid, as long as the eyes can see, we can simply touch and interact. Touch screens are divided into three categories: single-point touch screens; multi-point touch screens; and full-screen multi-point touch screens, that is, all-point touch screens.

1 Single-point touch screen
The functions of touch screens have evolved from simple to complex. The initial products only supported the simplest control, that is, a finger touching a point on the screen to achieve control. For example, we operate the POS terminal in the supermarket every day, or the check-in terminal at the airport. In the past, we could only control it through mechanical buttons around the screen. Single-point touch screens have achieved a major improvement in user interface on this basis. Of course, mechanical and new capacitive touch-sensing buttons are ubiquitous in our homes, offices and everywhere else: mobile phones, landlines, remote controls, televisions, computers and their various peripherals, game consoles, refrigerators, microwave ovens, ovens, radios and air conditioners and other in-car electronic control devices, etc. Now, single-point touch screens, as shown in Figure 1 below, integrate the user control interface directly on the display, so traditional mechanical buttons are no longer needed.

This screen brings two major benefits to the user interface. First, the device design space is optimized, which is particularly beneficial for small devices because the screen and buttons can be implemented in the same area. Second, because the buttons can be bound to any application in the operating system, the device can use an unlimited number of "buttons". The above functions are mainly based on resistive touch screen technology and have been widely promoted in various applications such as consumer electronics, airport newsstands, grocery store POS terminals and car GPS systems.

2 multi-touch screen

Although single-touch and resistive touch technologies are already amazing and revolutionary in their own right, they have two major drawbacks. First, resistive technology relies on the physical movement of the touch screen, which, while not a big deal, can degrade with wear and tear. Second, the technology only supports single-touch, which means that only one finger can be used at a time to make a single action on a certain area of ​​the screen. Why should user interaction with a device be limited to one finger? Apple has made an invaluable contribution to the user interface revolution with its iPhone, which uses an inductive capacitive touch screen. Even in miniaturized devices such as smartphones, multiple fingers are required to achieve optimal usability in order to fully utilize the functions of applications and operating systems. Because of Apple, it is now difficult for users to imagine how operations such as zooming in and out of photos, changing the orientation of albums and web page views, etc., as shown in Figure 2 below, could be accomplished without support for two-finger gesture finger movements.

Other technology innovators are continuing to use this multi-touch technology on a variety of device systems, including smartphones from other manufacturers such as the Google G-1 and Blackberry Storm, desktop and notebook computers such as the MacBook Pro and HP touchsmart, portable media players, and many other applications. Now, users have new expectations and hope to further improve the way users interact with their electronic products, and various electronic products are also scrambling to meet users' new demands.

3 full screen multi-touch screen

Like single-touch screens, multi-touch screens have a limitation in that the technology can only recognize a limited number of operating points on the screen at the same time. Why can it only recognize two operating points at a time? Users have ten fingers on their hands, and when users interact with each other, they need to use more fingers to operate. This is the origin of the concept of a full-screen multi-touch screen that can realize the control function of more than two fingers.

Full-screen multi-touch technology further enhances the reliable usability of touch screens to meet the needs of a variety of feature-rich applications. Reliability refers to our ability to accurately capture the raw data of all touch points on the screen with the highest granularity, minimizing the confusion caused by inaccurate screen touch positioning. Usability refers to the ability of many powerful applications to benefit from the ability to operate the screen with two hands or more than two fingers on screens of different sizes. 3D interactive games, keyboard input, and map operations are some of the main objects that use this touch screen function.

Essentially, full screen multi-touch technology provides device and system OEMs with all the touch data at their fingertips (pun intended), allowing them to be creative in developing the next generation of new and useful technology usability.