A world of change

Touchscreens have become a big hit among cellphone users. But what’s next after tap to click and the two-finger pinch and zoom?

Synaptics’ Fuse experimental phone shows a device that you can interact with by squeezing, gripping, flexing and tilting the phone. The device melds multiple technologies such as multi-touch capacitive sensing, haptic feedback, 3-D graphics and proximity sensing.

“It’s not a product but a prototype that showcases a lot of key input technologies,” says Robyn Palmer, marketing specialist for Synaptics. “Our focus was on how to make mobile phones mobile again.”

Fuse tackles the difficulty of single-handed usage and the need to constantly look at the screen, two big challenges that users face today with current generation touchscreen devices, says Synaptics.

With Fuse, touch sensors at the back of the phone means users can poke it to receive or initiate calls. Force and capacitive touch sensors on the sides of the phone also allow you to squeeze the phone to select icons from the phone’s menu. Incorporating the accelerometers into the user interface also means you can tilt the phone to scroll and grip the phone tight to stop.

Synaptics’ silent video demos some of these ideas.

Fuse uses Synaptics multi-touch touchscreen, capacitive scroll strips, a Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 processor, three accelerometers, force sensors on the sides of the phone, a 480 x 800 high-resolution AMOLED display and a 3.7-inch screen.

The phone–which was created in partnership with Texas Instruments, Immersion and U.K. design firm The Alloy, among others–won’t make it to market as a product. But Synaptics plans to license parts of it to handset makers that are looking to take user interface on mobile phones to the next level.

The Fuse concept phone will be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show  in Las Vegas next month.

Photo: Fuse/Synaptics