Touchscreens are all that, and a bag of chips. Apple showed the world what we knew all along – touchscreens are essential to the smartphone experience, and everyone from LG to Nokia is jumping on the touch-bandwagon. The newest entrant into the touchscreen realm seems to be Sony Ericsson is going to try their hand at a touchscreen twist. They’ve just filed with the USPTO for a patent on a “programmable keypad” – a reconfigurable, touchscreen-based keypad.
From the images in the patent filing, we can see that the keypad below the actual display is basically a touchscreen that can change based on the current function – making a phone call, inputing text, editing contacts, connecting to a mobile application (online banking, in this case).
Props to Sony Ericsson for going the reconfigurable touchscreen route for their keypad. We like the idea of turning the keypad into a supplemental display, rather than making the display an interactive touchscreen.
We can’t wait to see what Sony Ericsson brings to the table with an actual device based on this patent application. Although, as these things go, SE could just as easily scrape the idea altogether – but we’re pretty confident that they’ll bring this to market.
Update: revised to clarify that Sony Ericsson isn’t new to touchscreen technology – we’re huge fans of the SE P990i.
[Via: Unwired View]