Posted on 08/22/2012 8:11:04 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Synaptics brings force to touch" width="63" height="14" />Synaptics has three new technologies to talk about, ClearPad, ForcePad, and ThinTouch. All bring a bunch of new tech to bear, resulting in thinner, better, and possibly cheaper touch interactivity, all with more features than the ‘old way’.
First up is ClearPad, this is basically Synaptics’ name for a touchscreen with the sensor integrated in to the display itself, not glued on as a separate layer between the display and the glass cover. To make matters better, they also combine the transmit and receive layers to save yet more height over and above the screen integration.
Touch as a single layer
If you know don’t how capacitive touch sensors work, it is pretty simple, they have a large transmitter that generates an electro-magnetic field and a point receiver that reads the field. When you bring an object in to the field, it modifies it to varying degrees. Depending on how close the object is, and what it is made of, the field changes strength and shape. The receiver detects this, and with a little math that we won’t get in to here, it can figure out what is above the sensor and how far away it is. That is basically how modern capacitive touch screens work.
Synaptics brings a transmitter and receiver pair to a single layer, and also does it in a way that is compatible with modern LCD screen making processes. This is industry slang for “You can make both together without one screwing up the other”. That is how they get rid of a separate touch layer, the magic is making it compatible with the screen manufacturing process,......
(Excerpt) Read more at semiaccurate.com ...
Oh goody! Geeky stuff! This is actually very kewl for those of us who understand the simplicity.
Early use is in smll screens ...believe a new SONY smartphone is using the touchscreen technology.
Fudzilla :
Sony’s stylish Xperia P put to the test
I scanned the Fudzilla article..and found no explicit mention of Synaptics....but "White magic" was mentioned....and author rated the screen as almost as good as the Apple Retina Display.
So not sure if Sony is using the Synapics tech on THIS smartphone.
The Semi accurate states that the Sony Xperia P does use the technology.
Yes it is geeky....but touch and vision is what you have on these mobile devices.
fyi
Synaptics ForcePad: A Thinner, Pressure Sensitive Trackpad for Notebooks
Synaptics ThinTouch: Bringing the Capacitive Touch Revolution to Mechanical Keyboards
Synaptics Talks In-Cell Touch & The Value of a Good Touch Controller
Gee whiz. I don’t even own a cell phone. :)
“White Magic” adds a white subpixel in the display to make it brighter. The resolution is still a bit lower than the iPhone’s, and it having a bigger screen means lower pixels per inch.
Speaking of Apple, I wonder what, if anything, this has to do with Apple’s in-cell technology to be used in the iPhone 5. Given Apple’s long collaboration with Synaptics, you might think it was the Synaptics tech in the phone, but Apple came out with their own in-cell patents a while back. Competing tech, or cross-licensing?
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