T-Mobile G1 touchscreen can do multi-touch, but doesn’t

When you’re a wireless carrier vying for the hearts and minds of the smartphone-craving masses, it’s probably a good idea to throw caution to the wind and pack your smartphone to the brim with all the latest bells and whistles – like multi-touch. The T-Mobile G1 ushered in the age of the open-source Android OS with a refreshing capacitance-based touchscreen. Amid a sea of pressure-sensitive (resistive-based) touchscreens, the T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1’s glass touchscreen is a welcome iPhone-esque feature. Too bad it doesn’t support the pinching and twirling multi-finger inputs that has made the iPhone’s UI so popular.

Or, does it?

An intrepid Android developer, RyeBrye, has discovered that the T-Mobile G1’s capacitance touchscreen hardware is actually capable of supporting multi-touch inputs, but chooses to suppress that the feature. Like a vestigial tail, the G1’s Synaptics touchscreen driver has had its multi-touch code shriveled up and commented out – serving no real function than to remind users of what once was.

RyeBrye brought the multi-touch code snippet within the Synaptics touchscreen driver back to life with some judicious use of the “delete” key, and found that he could actually log multi-touch inputs from the touchscreen. The development proves that the G1 can actually handle snazzy multi-touch controls a la the iPhone and iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, the Android OS doesn’t yet make provisions for any multi-touch support. Hopes are high, however, that Android developers will figure out a way to free the inner multi-touch beast that lies in wait within the T-Mobile G1.

But, the real question here is why would HTC and T-Mobile choose to banish the multi-touch feature to realm of commented-out code. Patent conflicts could be an issue.

[Via: MobileCrunch]