Since Apple went and re-invented the cellphone market with the sudden introduction of touch technology at a point in time when all the other handset makers were faffing about with touch, wondering what to do with it, there have been several other attempts to continue that re-invention process, perhaps just so Apple can’t ‘surprise the market’ again.
We recently covered a new user interface from Israeli company Else with its ‘Intuition’ phone, and for some time there have been murmurings about patents, and potentially phones, which can be controlled from ‘behind’ the phone, using the same hand you are holding it with.
Now a group including Synaptics, Texas Instruments, Immersion, TheAlloy and The Astonishing Tribe have all got together and will be showing a device based around this idea at the US Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.
Synaptics is calling the device the Fuse, which is shown as a concept phone rather than a finished product. The Fuse uses several interface technologies at once, including multi-touch capacitive sensing, haptic feedback, 3-D graphics, force feedback and grip sensing, as well as proximity sensing. Immersion is one of the patent leaders in force feedback and haptics in general, with around 800 patents registered and in 2002 it successfully sued both Microsoft and Sony to establish that patent lead.
What these companies are trying to do are two things, huddle together for warmth in a very tough smart phone market, pushing the idea that all their talents are needed for next generation interfaces, and at the same time they want to cover every potential step in future handset design, beyond today’s touchscreen.
The idea behind the Fuse is easy, you hold it in one hand, and can scroll pages and move to and press menu options, simply using pressure on the side of the casing. Additionally the fingers underneath can touch the screen from the back, to accept a menu option or drill down. Combinations of buzzes and shakes confirm that you have your fingers in the right place and that your key presses have been accepted.
Each partner provided different expertise on the project. TheAlloy (UK) led the user experience and overall product design; TAT did the 3-D environment, Immersion provided tactile feedback, and the whole things was based on TI’s OMAP 3630 processor. Synaptics provided its ClearPad, NavPoint, and TouchButtons systems for things like two-finger input, proximity sensing, grip sensing, text entry, and high-resolution finger input.
This group is trying to hijack the patent wars on the touch screen, ensuring that Apple can’t go around suing everyone for its gesture controls, since it is arguable who registered the patents first, Apple or Synaptics. A license from this group would perhaps make Nokia fireproof against Apple suing it out of touchscreen technology. Expect handsets with all of these innovations to appear towards the end of 2010 and in early 2011.