[Q] [request] More than 2 fingers multitouch

corneliusm · 17th March 2011, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kennethpenn

My Galaxy S had 5-point touch. I don't think Apple has some exclusive patent for 10 point screens. Not sure though.

Motorola and Apple are currently locked in litigation. They're suing each other for patent infringement. HTC is in the same boat.

Samsung and Apple are current bedfellows- Samsung supplies lots of parts for Apple, and have more than likely entered into a cross-licensing agreement. Hence, Samsung can implement 5 point multitouch and not get bit by Apple.

kennethpenn · 17th March 2011, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by corneliusm

Motorola and Apple are currently locked in litigation. They're suing each other for patent infringement. HTC is in the same boat.

Samsung and Apple are current bedfellows- Samsung supplies lots of parts for Apple, and have more than likely entered into a cross-licensing agreement. Hence, Samsung can implement 5 point multitouch and not get bit by Apple.

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.

Techcruncher · 17th March 2011, 09:07 PM

get this.

When you connect the atrix to use as a "mouse" in webtop, (anyone who has the hack for HDMi webtop knows what I mean) it has a three finger gesture to pull down the notification bar or something.

This singlehandedly proves, this has nothing to do with patents, hardware, or anyhting

Motorola just felt like it.

shrooms90 · 17th March 2011, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kennethpenn

My Galaxy S had 5-point touch. I don't think Apple has some exclusive patent for 10 point screens. Not sure though.

Galaxy S even supports 10 points by hardware limit. The driver was just limited to 5 points (doesnt make sense to put 10 fingers on that little screen). And afaik nexus s should have the same touch sensor.

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk

corneliusm · 17th March 2011, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techcruncher

get this.

When you connect the atrix to use as a "mouse" in webtop, (anyone who has the hack for HDMi webtop knows what I mean) it has a three finger gesture to pull down the notification bar or something.

This singlehandedly proves, this has nothing to do with patents, hardware, or anyhting

Motorola just felt like it.

I have used the webtop "mouse" and have no idea what you're referring to.

No one is arguing that the hardware is limited to 2 points. The touch driver has a hardcoded limit. You can verify this by either using one of the multitouch test apps (Dotty, etc) or by coding your own and debug incoming touch events (MotionEvent.getPointerCount() will never exceed 2).

This means there was an arbitrary reason why Motorola did this. What reason could this be...

Performance? Yeah, 10 touches never brought the Galaxy S to a crawl, and the Atrix has beefier specs. Unlikely reason.

Incompatibility with MotoBlur? Possible but unlikely- code that supports 1 or 2 touches will simply ignore events with pointer IDs beyond 1 or 2.

Not useful? Unlikely- there are plenty of games and apps that support more than 2 touches. Personally, I find the lack of more than 2 points frustrating when using a SNES emulator.

Besides the Apple multitouch patent feud, what other reasons are there for Motorola to cripple a flagship device?

Techcruncher · 17th March 2011, 09:39 PM

"it definitely has capability for more than 2, and to test this, go into webtop mode (either via multimedia dock or the webtop mod hack) and click the Phone window. Slide three fingers down - it brings down the notification panel. One just moves the mouse and two is used for scrolling."

swanga · 07:06 PM

..................

Blind_Guardian · 17th March 2011, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techcruncher

"it definitely has capability for more than 2, and to test this, go into webtop mode (either via multimedia dock or the webtop mod hack) and click the Phone window. Slide three fingers down - it brings down the notification panel. One just moves the mouse and two is used for scrolling."

That's not an accurate test. I can slide three fingers down and it will bring the notification panel down without being in webtop. You can slide 4 fingers and the same thing will happen, because the phone will only register two.