The eLocity A7 Android tablet has been getting a lot of attention recently, as one of the first Android tablets available in the US to sport an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor, Android 2.2, and a capacitive, multitouch display. That ain’t a bad set of features for a $299 device. Unfortunately, it’s starting to look like “multitouch” might be putting it strongly.
According to users at the xda-developers forum, it turns out that while the eLocity A7 can handle pinch-to-zoom the display is actually 1+1 touch instead of true multitouch. That means it can’t register more than two inputs — and it doesn’t really do a very good job with two either. Basically the screen can tell when there are two fingers touching it, and the device’s software helps figure out the appropriate action (such as zooming).
If all you’re looking for in a multitouch device is pinch to zoom, then this might be good enough, although this type of pinch to zoom implementation isn’t as accurate as it would be on a true multitouch screen. But if you want to play games or run other apps (such as Google Maps 5) that rely on multiple inputs, then you’re out of luck. Software keyboards also tend to work better on true multitouch displays, since you don’t need to completely lift one finger before placing another on a different key.
The eLocity A7 is one of the fuller-featured tablets available for under $299… it’s just not quite as full featured as we had expected.
via Android Tablets
I’m only mentioning the lack of multitouch in the manner because the 1 point + 1 is what confused everyone ahead of time. There is no reason to dance around the issue. The screen registers one point of touch, and only that. It’s been tested.
@Pingtongting That’s what’s called a “resistive touch screen”. The majority of resistive touch screens are single touch, a high quality touch resistive touch screen is as responsive as a capacitive touch screen but provides the precision of a stylus input as opposed to requiring finger based inputs. If i’m only getting one input, you can rest assured i’d prefer it to be resistive based.
Also the Nvidia tegra has been touted as the CPU/GPU that’s going to change the face of android gaming. That’s not going to happen if you have a single input. A Tegra2 with one input point is like buying a gaming PC so that you can rush flash better.
No, you are incorrect. It only registers ONE point of touch. The “pinch to zoom” is a software kludge
I dunno. It seems using more than one finger for some things might be more intuitive and therefore more interactive. For instance, using two fingers to rotate an image on the screen seems to be more like you would do in real life. Maybe that’s supposed to be reserved for those with the HMDs and virtual glove controllers. Or maybe science fiction…
Do what’s wrong? I guess the lack of true multi-touch resulting in the inability to play multiplayer games like Fruit Ninja and Flight Control is a good thing?
OK so I’m just an industrial design student and not a profesional yet but last time I checked on screen multitouch we considered a bug and not a feature, particauly on small screen form factors. Good software design should have a simple interface and having to place multiple fingers over a screen to interact with a computer isn’t good design. Good design would mean creating controls that work simply with minimal input and enhancing usability instead of limiting visibility. There are many implementations that do this correctly, but usually Android gets these design ideas wrong. I guess it’s OK because Android is aiming to be a popular operating system and not a good one. Even though multitouch isn’t good, it’s popular, so I guess it’s OK for Android. But what’s your point? If I read this and didn’t know better, I would think that the lack of multitouch on this tablet is a bad thing. However, it’s the need for multitouch in Android that’s the bad thing. So why are you criticizing a tablet that does nothing wrong for not helping an operating system do what is wrong? As you can tell I am very confused.