Touchscreens slowly conquer all kinds of portable devices, which is no wonder, since customers are looking for small devices with large displays. Screens will soon occupy the full front of mobile phones and media players, thus being no more room for a conventional keypad, or only in the case of a slider form factor. The use of a touchscreen might even decrease production costs, as these devices need much less parts, the production of which is also easier. The only problem is that the virtual keys drawn on the flat surface do not feel like real buttons at all, and there are no real limits between them, as the whole thing is one flat surface. Vibrating feedback, sound- and visual effects although help a lot, accidental taps still result in lots of erroneous entries.
Sony's latest patent doesn't want to "fool" the user only with vibrating, sound and visual feedback, but they would place tapable, pressable zones on the display, which can really be depressed a bit and their two different states can be really felt by the user. These zones, however, are not only passive parts of the display, but they can be programmed, thus providing the ability to disable pressability. These non-pressable zones can separate the virtual keys, just like the separation rims do from under Sagem or Motorola models' keypads that have a completely flat keypad. It is not yet known when will this solution be available for the public, but Sony will possibly make this new technology for its subsidiary, besides the new PSP consoles.
Translated by Szaszati
