Synaptics shows how touch controls will change in the next year

Synaptics showed off how touch controls will change in the next year at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. Synaptics has a big market share in touch application hardware and it showed off its latest products at the show.

In the picture at right, you can see that upcoming touchpads for laptops will be able to handle the simultaneous input from more than just two fingers. The image at the right shows how you can use … Continue Reading

Atmel enables slimmer and more precise touchscreen and charger chips

Chip maker Atmel is delivering technology advances at the Consumer Electronics Show that will result in better touchscreens and chargers. This means we’ll soon have thinner, more accurate and more battery-efficient gadgets to buy.

Each year, touch technology is getting better and better, but device engineers and consumers are also getting more demanding and have no tolerance for flaws in touchscreens. So the San Jose, Calif.-based company is unveiling its next generation of maXTouch S … Continue Reading

Synaptics hires former AMD executive as CEO

Synaptics, the maker of touch pads and other input devices for computers and phones, has hired former Advanced Micro Devices executive Rick Bergman as its new chief executive.

Bergman will lead Synaptics into the future of human interfaces for computers, mobile phones, and entertainment devices. Synaptics currently makes the software and sensors for touchpads, which replace the computer mouse in a laptop. Users swipe their finger across the touchpad to get a cursor to move … Continue Reading

Touchscreen inventor: Forget 3D, haptics is the future of mobile screens

Now that capacitive touchscreens have become the standard in mobile devices, many are looking for  the next big innovation.

3D is one possibility — smartphones featuring the technology like the Evo 3D are already available. But according to Synaptics technology strategist Andrew Hsu, father of the capacitive touchscreen, the future of touchscreens could more likely lie in haptics, a technology which would allow us to feel individual touchscreen elements.

“Where I see the next frontier … Continue Reading