By Jennifer Colegrove – Director, Display Technologies, DisplaySearch
There are many touch screen suppliers exhibiting at SID this year. The exciting news on the touch front includes resistive multi-touch. Fujitsu showcased its multi-touch resistive touch screen on a 6” mini-note that is selling in Japan. Fujitsu indicated that its multi-touch resistive is Windows 7 certified. The size ranges from 5.6” to 12” currently.
Figure 1: Fujitsu Mini-Note with Multi-Touch Resistive Touch Screen
Source: Fujitsu, photo by DisplaySearch
Stantum also demonstrated its multi-touch resistive touch screen. Its licensees ST Microelectronics and Sitronix are currently mass-producing the controller IC with several design wins. We’ll see a Chinese-brand slate PC with their multi-touch resistive in the market this June. The slate PC will be 10.1” and 11”. In Q3, we’ll also see a Chinese-brand mobile phone with multi-touch resistive in the market.
Wintek also demonstrated a 10.1” multi-touch resistive. Wintek indicated the technology is ready for commercial adoption. Meanwhile, Samsung Electronic demonstrated a 10.1” multi-touch resistive touch screen, and the unique thing is that it is also on-cell. However, the on-cell multi-touch resistive won’t be commercially available this year.
Multi-touch resistive touch screens have all the benefits of resistive touch screens, which is the most common touch technology. Resistive touch screens are inexpensive, they accept both finger and stylus input, and they can recognize handwriting. With the multi-touch feature added, it allows for a two-finger pinch, as well as spread, rotate, etc.
Compared to multi-touch projected capacitive, resistive is cheaper, but it is less durable. Resistive also needs a certain amount of force for the touch to be registered. Besides slates and mini-notes, resistive multi-touch will also be suitable for e-book devices. In our 2010 Touch Panel Market Analysis, we reported that a small amount of resistive multi-touch screens had shipped in 2009; 2010 will be the year for it to have high volume production.
