Tactus, the Future of Touch Screen Devices
disappearing keyboard
In 2008, Tactus, a company based in Fremont California was set up in order to revolutionize the tablet and touch screen phone market. Although what it offers is not massively widespread yet the concept is so revolutionary that the company managed to secure a $6 Million investment to continue to develop its idea. The investment lead by Peter J. Thompson was made in order to make the idea more marketable.
The new technology will be built in to regular touch screen devices and will function in exactly the same way as we are used to with touch screens, however when a keyboard layout appears on the screen, or indeed any pushable button, the screen will rise up with little buttons so that they can be physically pressed. Whilst this happens the rest of the screen will remain unaltered both in appearance and in functionality.
If this is hard to imagine here is a video so that you can see the concept for itself:
Many experts believe that this will revolutionise the tablet market and make it a lot more competitive against netbooks and other small laptops, especially considering that the tablets already on the market tend to be cheaper anyway. The new technology will allow for faster and easier typing making them a lot more usable for work.
The technology works by having a layer of what Tactus call their “Tactile layer technology” rather than a plastic sheet or pane of glass over the already present touchscreen technology, this flexible material will subsequently allow physical buttons from underneath the material rise from the circuit boards and be physically pushed. This will result in a much more real sensation compared to the current vibrating screens we have today.
The reason experts believe that this will eventually become widespread is due to the fact that the tactile layer works with the current touchscreen technology that is already present in the device. Furthermore, the tactile layer technology can come in a wide variety of sizes and uses little or no energy at all.
Now THAT is just too cool! I can’t wait to see one of them!
I think something like this is truly useful and really neat too. I cant wait to try something like this because i think it will be so much easier to use too. I appreciate you sharing about this or I would have never known about it.
Awesome idea..though I can see many people having to get physio on their fingers from using these too much!
That’s really cool! I would so love that.
I was so excited to learn about this that tonight I showed it to my husband who is a big geek. He just smiled the whole time through the video, which mean he was digging it! When it finished I said “well, what do you think” and he said “THAT’S AWESOME!” Tomorrow he will go to work and brag about this new techology that “he” found…lol.
Oh wow. I know that there are a lot of texters who do not want to switch from their keyboard phone to a screen based keyboard because they do not like the fact that there aren’t any keys to push. This tech would definitely encourage them to go with smart phones instead of flip phones and slide phones.
I know on a tablet I would love to have a reactive keyboard that I would be more comfortable to type on. As it is now, I have to invest in a separate device to attach to the tablet in order to type away. On a keyboard it is much faster to input than the touch screen interface. Having the combination of both would be awesome. No need to shell out extra money, but have the advantage of being able to enter in data just as fast as if you were on a regular computer.