In my opinion, multitouch on a phone is rather pointless unless that phone's screen is big. To do it, you need to either touch the screen with two fingers at once (which is very uncomfortable if you want any kind of control), or you need both hands oriented to touch the screen (which is uncomfortable). Doing so also blocks almost the entire screen. Note that none of the iPhone commercials showcase this multitouch functionality, probably because it blocks so much of the screen and requires uncomfortable operation (often leading to one dropping the thing).
<br>Just about the only application for multitouch for a phone like this is the keyboard, and even that seems a bit odd to me since people don't usually press two keys at once.<br>Am I missing something, like a tendency to have one's fingers on a key for a moment after pressing, while the other is being pressed?
<br><br>For other two-touch gestures that require specific motions, what Simon mentions is entirely possible on most single touch screens. It is possible to determine, with some accuracy, how many points are touching the screen. The point reported by the touch screen is actually the point directly between the two touch points. (This is controlled by the pressure of either touch, which can make for some pretty fancy tricks already).
<br><br>Now, some fancy mathematics stuff later, and you have two-fingered gestures. First finger can be assumed to not move, so when a second finger appears the position of the two can be figured out. Most multitouch gestures work with the first finger not moving anyway, so it is hardly a sacrifice.
<br>The method works pretty well, though it could be worrying bringing it out of a test scenario and into an actual released "final" product, since it's all rather imprecise. With some calibration, wide-spread testing, and some assumptions, it could be quite nice.
<br><br>Just detecting "gesture mode" could be a simple matter of figuring out how many touch points there are (some multitouch demos for the Nintendo DS do this really well!). With that, simple linear gestures such as the two fingered scrolling gesture could be really nice and easy (as with track pads; move both fingers vertically to scroll vertically, etc.). Touching with two fingers to do the same as a double click also springs to mind.
<br><br>I, for one, would be happy to see a gesture replace that scroll wheel on the left side of the interface!<br><br>Bye,<br>-Dylan McCall<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/15/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Simon
</b> <<a href="mailto:simon.xhz@gmail.com">simon.xhz@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Well I don't know what so cool about multi-touch screen on a phone unless
<br>> for scaling images and webpages. So maybe just implementing a gesture to do<br>> that function, no need for a full blown implementation of a multi-touch<br>> support. unless i'm not getting something...
<br><br>I'm not sure if it is related, but on a mac, you can hold one finger<br>still and move the other up to down to have the screen be scrolled<br>(like the scroll button on a mouse).<br>And that is killer, things get relative to touches!
<br><br>Simon<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>OpenMoko community mailing list<br><a href="mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org">community@lists.openmoko.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community">
http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community</a><br></blockquote></div><br>