G1 capable of multi-touch input? Looks like it.

[thelazzyone]

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2008/11/17/g1-capable-of-multi-touch-input-looks-like-it/

http://www.ryebrye.com/blog/2008/11/17/proving-the-g1-screen-can-handle-multi-touch/

Interesting read..


Whenever the G1 vs iPhone debate gets underway, iPhone purists are quick to flag the G1’s lack of multi-touch input support. Turns out, it might just be able to handle it after all -on the hardware end, at least. Whilst tearing his G1’s workings apart line-by-line, a crafty coder going by RyeBrye came across an interesting artifact. It seems the driver for the Synaptics touchscreen has some code commented out; after recompiling the kernel with said code back in, he was able to track two finger presses at once.

So if the hardware supports it, why no multi-touch on the G1? Patents, presumably. While this in no way actually enables to you to do any kind of multi-touch funnin’ immediately (nothing made for the G1 is currently coded for use with multi-touch, afterall), it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Though we probably won’t see any official support for multi-touch on the G1 any time soon, someone with a bit of spare time to tinker will probably figure out a way to make use of it before too long.

[allthewhile]

Finally some actual confirmation. This is awesome!

[thelazzyone]

Yeah.. It was a nice read...

[JayBachatero]

Finally some real evidence. Lets see where this goes. :)

[DreamcastDC]

Finally some solid prove, I have been saying all along that the hardware supports it.

[ColtM733]

That's great news, now the waiting game....

[ghoonk]

Yes, good news indeed. Question is, which developer will take the chance of incurring the wrath of Apple's trigger-happy lawyers? Of course, it would just be 'unfortunate for Apple' if users somehow managed to tweak the code with 'Google not being able to do anything about it' such that users are enabling multitouch, and how some apps may have code that works on multitouch devices but 'shouldn't be working on the G1, since we all know that the G1 isn't multitouch-capable'

:D

[Priz]

I have been saying all along that the hardware supports it.

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/18809-post23.html

You're not the only one. :)

[ministersin]

Still no one seems to get the fact that Android is a cross platform OS.

Windows supports the use of a TV Tuner, but not every computer has a TV Tuner.

There is a REASON it is commented out. Because ti would be useless on hardware that does not support it.

Synaptics touch screens have multi-touch capability, IF the manufacturer ordering the hardware pays extra to have the gestures supported on the equipment.


Multi-touch is determined by the Enhanced Gesture Recognition, and a multi-touch screen requires more system resources. Since the API does not include multi-touch at this time, the EGR for multi-touch would only cost HTC more and use up additional resources that are not required for the system.

http://www.synaptics.com/solutions/t...y/gestures/egr

Even if Android plans to offer a multi-touch system they would roll out new hardware capable of it at that time, leaving previous hardware that does not meet the requirements on previous builds.

[ministersin]

And here's Vincent's play on the multi-touch:

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f10/for-the-record-g1-does-not-have-multi-touch-like-the-iphone-729/