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True multi-touch UI?

burningembers

Android Enthusiast
May 1, 2010
331
26
Portland, OR
Does anyone know whether or not this Samsung Fascinate will have 5+ simultaneous touch points like the Samsung Captivate?

This is the largely the reason I'm switching from an HTC Incredible. I can't stand having only 2 simultaneous touch points, and HTC hasn't made any plans or claims to expand it.

The moment I picked up the Captivate and realized it could do far more than 2 simultaneous touch points, I loved it - hence why I'm getting a Fascinate...hope it works out.
 
There are numerous occasions where a lack of support for more than two touches causes problems. Generally this is centered around rapid-fire input, and not intended simultaneous touching.

The most notable for me is when typing quickly I can sometimes get up to where I am touching 4 times in such quick succession that it is interpreted as 4 simultaneous touches. When this happens on my HTC Incredible, which is software limited to 2-touch support, the last two letters get ignored and input picks up again at the "5th" touch (or the 3rd and 4th touches get mis-interpreted, see example below).

This means I purposely have to type really slowly otherwise letters get missed, and it is extremely annoying.

The only other phone I've personally used where this is not an issue is the iPhone. The easiest way to test is to type something like, "hey" by putting thumb on 'h', other thumb on 'e', leaving the thumb on 'e', lift up the thumb on 'h', and use it to press 'y'.

On the HTC Incredible you get "hee" because on the third touch it gets confused and just re-touches the second touch. On the iPhone and the Samsung Captivate, I correctly get "hey".
 
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There are numerous occasions where a lack of support for more than two touches causes problems. Generally this is centered around rapid-fire input, and not intended simultaneous touching.

The most notable for me is when typing quickly I can sometimes get up to where I am touching 4 times in such quick succession that it is interpreted as 4 simultaneous touches. When this happens on my HTC Incredible, which is software limited to 2-touch support, the last two letters get ignored and input picks up again at the "5th" touch (or the 3rd and 4th touches get mis-interpreted, see example below).

This means I purposely have to type really slowly otherwise letters get missed, and it is extremely annoying.

The only other phone I've personally used where this is not an issue is the iPhone. The easiest way to test is to type something like, "hey" by putting thumb on 'h', other thumb on 'e', leaving the thumb on 'e', lift up the thumb on 'h', and use it to press 'y'.

On the HTC Incredible you get "hee" because on the third touch it gets confused and just re-touches the second touch. On the iPhone and the Samsung Captivate, I correctly get "hey".


I had tons of problems with this on the D1. However, with the phone at 1ghz and above, Android 2.2 and smart keyboard pro have fixed this problem for me for the most part. I just bought a fascinate though, so i'm hoping this will yield and even more accurate typing experience.
 
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I had tons of problems with this on the D1. However, with the phone at 1ghz and above, Android 2.2 and smart keyboard pro have fixed this problem for me for the most part. I just bought a fascinate though, so i'm hoping this will yield and even more accurate typing experience.

Fascinate actually recognizes 5 simultaneous touch-points, so ideally, the above scenario will never come into play. I have yet to have any issues with fast typing on the Fascinate (nor on my Samsung Focus WP7, it appears to recognize 4 simultaneous touch-points).

I'd mention, though, that those 5 simultaneous touch-points have issues when you get 3-5 of them going and their axes' cross. But honestly, I'm not complaining, there is never scenario where I'm touching 3+ things at once and crossing axes'.
 
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