There are all sorts of touchscreens out there. But one of the biggest lines diving, say, an iPhone touchscreen from those found on many tablets, notebooks, and Windows Mobile phones is the line between screens that accept stylus input and those that are finger-friendly. It’s rare to find a touchscreen that can handle both types of input, which is a shame because would be nice to be able to draw on a touchscreen with a stylus then put it down for a moment to type on an onscreen QWERTY keyboard with your fingers.

But it turns out there is a type of touchscreen that can handle exactly that kind of usage. French display maker Stantum has a multitouch display that can handle both types of input. What’s more, the Stantum display can recognize up to 10 simultaneous inputs, which means you can tap away with all of your fingers at once. If that’s the kind of thing you’re likely to do.

Stantum has been making screens like these for more than half a decade, but the folks at Laptop Magazine caught up with the company at Mobile World Congress this week and found that Stantum is partnering with global chip makers that could allow the screens to show up in laptops and tablets soon.

The latest version of the touchscreen also recognizes pressure-sensitive finger input. In other words, a light press generates a light line or dot while pressing down harder nets you a thicker line on the display.

You can watch a video of the screen in action at Laptop Magazine’s web site.

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5 replies on “Stantum touchscreens with 10-finger, stylus input coming soon?”

  1. There’s a massive deal about their touch screens, it’s just that this article doesn’t articulate it that well. The big deal is that stantum combines the precision, pressure sensitivity, and the ability to use any object (conductive or not) for input, of resistive touch screens, with the multitouch capabilities of the capacitive screen (some might argue capacitive screens are more sensitive, and they are, but the best resistive screen nowadays, imo, are almost as sensitive, while leaving you a comfortable ability to graze the screen without it being registered as an input).

    The thing is that almost any resistive OR capacitive screen that uses stylus input can also be thrown off by you resting your hand on it. The only thing that stops it is if the stylus has an active digitizer, and the device (either at the hardware level, or the software/OS level) is programmed to stop taking the resistive/capacitive screen inputs when it detects a digitizer input. Which effectively puts the stylus input hand-resting subject completely outside of the aspect of touch screens that Stantum excels at. And not just “it’s a different subject/matter/advantage”, but in the sense that the two are completely unrelated, and I can have a shitty resistive screen you have to put your body weight against to be sensed, and still have digitizer input be responded to the way you’re talking about, or one of the stantum ones, and if the manufacturer of the device programs it right or gives you the settings option to enable that, you’ll still be able to rest whatever you want on the screen while it senses the digitizer and it’ll just use the stylus input.

    AND on top of that, you have the fact that at the software level, you can also write code to detect the approximate size and shape of the touches, which would then allow for ‘ignoring’ of inputs that resemble a resting hand in situations where you have that and another ‘stylus-like’ input.

  2. I hope it wont cost as much as their Lemur controller, i mean, boy that is one expensive piece of equipment. Sure, its not a tablet, but still up to this day no one has created something similar with such multi touch capabilities.

  3. What? There’s nothing special about their stylus input…it’s just a resistive screen and all resistive screens accept stylus input (they accept input from everything actually, so long as it applies pressure to the screen).

    The big deal about stylus input wouldn’t be about the ability to use a pen like tool, it’s about being able to use a pen as if it were paper, meaning the ability to rest your palm on the screen. I imagine resting your palm on a screen that recognizes 10 inputs would make a pretty big mess of your notes.

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