After the iPhone, every major cell phone manufacturers in the world is working on somekind of touch-interface based device that would have a great impact on the design of the next generation of consumer friendly handsets. Having said this, here's the good news for all the Blackberry users around the globe. A new and interesting patent filed by the RIM Blackberry indicates a new direction that the smartphone company is heading into with its upcoming Blackberry 9000/9100/9900 series devices and consumer handsets giving us a valid reason to believe the rumors that RIM Blackberry may soon have its own touchscreen interface. However, there's not much information available about the new 9000/9100 line of Blackberries.
The first one is titled "Handheld mobile communication device with movable display/cover member," which as illustrated below, introduces us to an interesting angled Blackberry slider configuration whereby the keypad is hidden underneath the screen section, similar to the HTC Touch Dual or the Samsung SGH-i620 aka Sangria.
I think the intention behind this is to be able to use the Blackberry both in the standard as well as the angled-slider modes as needed, and in the closed position it could be operated via the touchscreen interferace, which brings us to the second patent filed called "System and method of integrating a touchscreen within an LCD," which means the company could be creating it’s own multi-touch touchscreen technology.
This patent relates to the field of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), more specifically to touchscreen LCDs. Although there are several types of touchscreens possible, the two most commonly used touchscreen in handheld devices are resistive and capacitive touchscreen. This new technology is said to be different from capacitive touchscreen used in Apple’s iPhones, which uses a metallic coating on a glass sensor, but somewhat similar to the touchscreen described in Nokia S60 Touch patents.
As illustrated in the picture below this also encompasses a touchscreen embedded within the LCD itself. Only instead of using light sensors, it uses an array of parallel electrodes throughout the display and measures the change in voltage between them as pressure is applied through the finger or stylus provided.
In addition of being able to detect multiple touches at once, the basis for Multi-touch, this technology also provides the capability to detect the level of pressure the user is making on the screen and that opens another set of interesting 3D touch interface design possibilities like zooming in and out by just increasing/decreasing the finger pressure on the display or switching between "scroll" and "move" similarly by varying the pressure applied during the sliding gesture.
It’s uncertain whether RIM Blackberry will be displaying any handset that uses either of the two concepts by the end of this year.
More details can be found at Unwired View .
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