Because it's cool that's why. Why do you think the Wii is kicking PS3 and Xbox 360 so bad? That thing is a way underpowered joke when compared to the other two consoles but it's interactive. I believe that by removing the common digital from the day to day it becomes more in touch with our human side of things. It then has staying power.

Precision and lack of support for anything else but your self.

Wow, this looks amazing. Multitouch is not a gimmick, its useful and makes everything much more fluid. Anything that emulates real life better is a win in my book. Combining the awesomeness of multitouch with resistive screens is so cool.

Also, why the hell do people like capacitive screens so much? The N810 has the best touch screen I have ever seen in a mobile device. Maybe it is me, but screens like the iPhone are just so hard to use...

So, how does it work? The explanation was a little vague. Does it require a different construction for the touchscreen (the chap said both that it would and wouldn't work on current touchscreens), or is it all down to processing the available data (on their website they talk about their controller chip which hides this logic, and what else also)?

1) Lack of resolution. At the moment capacitive screens have less (about half) the resolution of the actual LCD screen, while resistive screens have an even higher resolution than the LCD screen it's used with.

2) Capacitive screens work only with with capacitive objects, like your (ungloved) finger, or a specially made stylus. A resistive screen works with _anything_, and with the demonstrated screen technology this becomes even more important - think of the possibility to use an actual paint brush, or any item you find that has the line thickness you need. No more walking through a menu to change the 'brush': Using a real brush is much more flexible - turn it as you go, and watch your wiggly line change between narrow and wide as you paint it.

1 can be remedied in future capacitive screens, 2 can never be.

simon, its a sandwich which works by using a matrix of H/V wires throughout the touchscreen bread with a set of spacer dots in the filler (unlike the simpler 4/5 wires resistive usually have)

see the overview flash:
http://www.stantum.com/spip.php?article52

all this sits ontop of the current lcd display.

it also has a custom controller to process the matrix.

its a different configuration and the hard work is done inside the controller chip itself.

similar materials as a resistive are used, there is just more connectors and cables and pre cut stuff.

looks bloody fantastic (though all MT does, no matter what tech is powering it)



..back to resting voice..

so to quickly guess, the "old" way of doing a resistive screen, any pressure on the screen would cause a change across the whole screen, and the trick was to look for the place where the change was greatest, as that would be where the pressure was applied.

this is then why one get the effect that pressing in multiple spots makes the pointer end up between them, as thats the center of the field with the highest change.

thanks to the riser dots however, one can create multiple, smaller areas, as the dots will counteract the general spread of change.

A normal resistive screen also has the horizontal and vertical wires doesn't it? How is this different (other than effectively having two sets of H & V wires? - or is that the key?)

I can't imagine having 2 touchscreens will make the screen any clearer...

Ignore me, have looked at how they work now and will go back to sleep

One thing I really like about this tech: the ability to discern stylus vs. hand input. This is useful when resting a hand on the display (as sometimes is the case for the N810) but not wanting it to affect the drawing in any way. Perhaps not necessary, but can improve interaction greatly for non-portrait input.

With the N810s pressure gauging, I wonder if this can currently be emulated in software, with special input libraries and a little extra computation. Perhaps simply to shut down the input when the pressure (size of input tip) passes a limiting point. This ensures our drawing comes from the pen tip and not our palms....

YARR!
}:^)~

Caaaaa

Apart from the other things already noted here, resistive screens are also a lot cheaper, resulting in cheaper products.