How Multi-Touch Technology Changed the Game

 

We've come to take the technology that powers our smartphones for granted. But we've only recently added the word 'smart' to phones. Cellphones used be nothing but telephones that you could take on the go.  And then came along the touch screen. And now we have multi-touch displays. If you take a minute from gazing at your smartphone and think about how far the technology for phones have come, it's pretty impressive. Manufactures of smart devices are really promoting the term multi-touch now. But since touch screens have been around for some time now, a lot of people don't really understand how multi-touch is different.

 

Touch screens allow people to interact with an interface by touching a screen. However, multi-touch displays take touch screens to the next level. The Multitouch Display allow a single user or more than one user to use a device and that is not possible with regular touch screens. And of course one person can use several fingers.

 

To the layperson there might not seem like a big step between touch screen and multi-step but it is a huge step and required a huge advancement in technology. In between we had 'enhanced gesture single-touch'. Enhanced gesture single touch is the reason we can shrink pages by 'pinching' them. Even though some people use the term multi-touch when they mean enhanced gesture; they are not the same thing.

 

Although to consumers, Multi-touch Screen displays are something new, they have been around for a long time. Believe or not, the first multi-touch screen was developed at M.I.T in 1982. It was in its infancy then, of course. About a decade later it started being used in very limited instances such as military security. Security doors that unlock when someone touches it and their fingerprints are scanned is multi-touch technology. However, it took a couple of more decades for it to become the technology that we recognize and use today.

 

Multi-touch technology has advanced a lot in the last 30 years and it continues to advance every day. The implications for what it will be able to do in the future are unbelievable. Most technology experts believe that the keyboard will go the way of the landline, cassette player, answering machine and all other obsolete technologies. Multi-touch technology will advance so much that we will be able to use all sorts of gestures.

 

If you want to see the latest in multi-touch technology, you can head down to an expo. If there aren't any expos in your area, there are plenty of tech websites to help you stay abreast of the advancements in cellphone technology.