Here's a great article that outlines some of the new touch sensing technologies that are beginning to appear in cell phones, such as the iPhone.
The article suggests that many of the forthcoming touch enabled cell phones will leverage "projected capacitive" touch technology rather than the more traditional resistive digitizers we've seen in some devices. One advantage is that with the capacitive approach a finger can be detected without actually fully touching the digitizer (or at least 2mm away). The article says that this improves gesturing.
In fact, Todd Achilles, vice president of HTC America says, "We've been doing touch screens for a long time, but this generation of touch screens is definitely breathing new life into the experience. They're more accurate, more responsive, and you can get what you want to do on the first click."
I wonder if we'll begin to see UMPCs that leverage the new capacitive technologies. That might be interesting.
Now as to whether these new digitizers support multi-touch I guess that's another story.


Incremental Blogger