Just the other day we reported that two finger presses were recorded on the T-mobile G1, by a user that goes by the name RyeBrye. Well he decided to make a video to prove his findings for us. The video very clearly shows the two separate traces at the same time.
We are still asking why in the world would Google leave out multi-touch in the T-Mobile G1? They are taking a huge function away from Android users giving the iPhone the upper hand. We certainly hope that Google left it out because it had not been developed yet, with the thought that it would eventually be brought to G1 owners.
The next question is where do we go from here? Clearly there will be many developers that will take advantage of this “hidden feature” and try to further develop the technology. One thing that we believe is a must have is multi-touch browsers integration. While these ideas may be a ways off, it shows great promise for the development of Android and the G1.
Comments For This Post
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Ooh, even through in some Pink Floyd
by Jorsher
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THREAD IS OLD. already been discussed.
by embrace LB
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lol the iphone fanboys are going to be pissed when they see this!
by android17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by embrace LB
THREAD IS OLD. already been discussed.
Did it have the video?
by Jorsher
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were did he get that shiny black g1 from
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yup i got bestskinsever on and it looks pretty identical to mine..
by hbthemik
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I'm still not sold by the video. It doesn't look that different to capacative averaging that works on non-multitouch displays. To be honest, if you see how unresponsive certains parts are, I'd say it shows that its not properly supported at hardware level.
by Seraphic
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I have been using the phone for about a week now and to tell you the truth, I dont think multi-touch web browsing is a "Must have". sure it would be nice but im perfectly happy using the + - zoom.
by fonzy
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Yep. Either the program isn't optimized or the hardware isn't quite fast enough to track both fingers accurately. Looking at how it traced, it is possible to implement something fairly reliable for pinch/expand actions. Though, I wouldn't count on this making it into any functionality released by Google for this device.
by inphu510n
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Seraphic
I'm still not sold by the video. It doesn't look that different to capacative averaging that works on non-multitouch displays. To be honest, if you see how unresponsive certains parts are, I'd say it shows that its not properly supported at hardware level.
The reason it is not smooth is because of how this is hacked together. The most recent touchscreen event buffer is being written to /dev/tsout on my device. I have a thread in the java program constantly polling that looking for data - but the likelihood of the thread always polling it at the right time to get the touch data is pretty low - and it probably drops most of the touch events.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by inphu510n
Yep. Either the program isn't optimized or the hardware isn't quite fast enough to track both fingers accurately. Looking at how it traced, it is possible to implement something fairly reliable for pinch/expand actions. Though, I wouldn't count on this making it into any functionality released by Google for this device.
It's most certainly that the program isn't optimized. Not only is the program not optimized, the method of grabbing the data itself is a complete hack. I'm really busy with my day job this week, but later on I will post the source code and document everything - I will put at least one basic optimization in place (currently, it is regexing every time it polls that device - which is unnecessary since I can spit the data out in a format that i can just use .split(" ") and get the same result - but I was lazy at 2:00AM and didn't want to recompile my kernel for my phone then)
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Well, I was going to back you up Ryan, even though the information you posted was clearly stated in the complete article, but you handled it with grace
by Jorsher
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From what I've heard, Apple has patents on multi-touch, which makes Google hesitant to release multi-touch. I don't recall where I read this, but it was somewhere on the net, on one of the tech sites.
by EclipsedExistence
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan Gardner
Also, please refrain from making up terms like "capacitive averaging" in an attempt to justify your skepticism.
Literally LOL at that line. Hilarious. I like you, Ryan. Welcome to AC. 
by DesignDawg
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan Gardner
The reason it is not smooth is because of how this is hacked together. The most recent touchscreen event buffer is being written to /dev/tsout on my device. I have a thread in the java program constantly polling that looking for data - but the likelihood of the thread always polling it at the right time to get the touch data is pretty low - and it probably drops most of the touch events.
I say what I see. I said I'm not sold on the idea; I didn't say it proved either way. Yes, the program was hacked together and it's a good example of what could be done, and I hope the hardware supports true multitouch - I'd love my G1 to support it but until I see a working, practical example I'll remain skeptical.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DesignDawg
Literally LOL at that line. Hilarious. I like you, Ryan. Welcome to AC. 
by Seraphic
(16) comments | Add your commentsoh 4got screen protecter by gcode247
Regarding the hardware level... That was already proven unequivocally by the debug logs which were posted last week - the hardware without any doubts supports and does track multiple fingers.
If anything, the fact that such a crude and rough hack works at all shows a lot of potential for what can be done once the proper support is put in place.
Also, please refrain from making up terms like "capacitive averaging" in an attempt to justify your skepticism. by Ryan Gardner
It's unlikely that Google / T-mobile will ever push out an update to this device that includes official multitouch support, but it's entirely reasonable that multitouch support can be built into the android platform and that such support can be enabled very easily by developers for the G1 with a custom firmware.
The question of how to best implement support for multitouch in the android platform must be addressed - if Google doesn't have a multitouch device in the pipepline it might not be a top priority for them, but as a community we can work with them to get support properly put into the platform so that any future official device will be easy to implement, and any G1 owners who want to run custom builds could get multitouch support as soon as the stuff is in place.
As far as patents and such are concerned, let the lawyers deal with that. by Ryan Gardner
Regarding the hardware level... That was already proven unequivocally by the debug logs which were posted last week - the hardware without any doubts supports and does track multiple fingers.
If anything, the fact that such a crude and rough hack works at all shows a lot of potential for what can be done once the proper support is put in place.
Also, please refrain from making up terms like "capacitive averaging" in an attempt to justify your skepticism.
Terms such as "capacitive averaging" aren't made up at all, anyone who works with touchscreen technology will tell you this - there's no exact name for it, it's what we call it at Panasonic. Almost all touchscreens use a form of capacitive averaging to determine positional input data. Take a look here if you must for a basic example. There are projected non-capacitive averaging screens which only take the very first contact with the screen into account. These are commonly used in touch-keypads and anything that doesn't require 'movement' of the finger/stylus. by Seraphic