Look Ma, No Buttons

Futuristic touch-screen technology is quickly becoming a present-day reality on many consumer electronic gadgets

by Olga Kharif

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In the 2002 thriller Minority Report, detective John Anderton, (played by Tom Cruise) uses gloved hands to manipulate images on three-dimensional charts. The depiction of futuristic technology was set in 2054.

The future arrived sooner than expected. The features that let Cruise's character quickly sift through crime data represent a new breed of gesture-based, touch-sensitive technologies that are becoming a reality in 2007—and revolutionizing consumer electronics.

iPhone Leads the Way

Apple (AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs literally put his finger on the trend on Jan. 9 when he unveiled the iPhone, a cell phone that has no buttons and is operated via touch screen. Nintendo's (NTDOY) new gaming console, the Wii, uses the player's movements to control game play. Korea's LG will make its own touch-screen mobile phone, the LG Prada, designed with the fashion house of Miuccia Prada, available in Europe in February.

Those devices are just the tip of the touch-screen iceberg. Devices ranging from cell phones to TV remotes to MP3 players to global positioning systems (GPS) are due for a makeover as they incorporate touch screens and gesture-based navigation.

"There's a certain maturing now in interface and graphics," says Jeff Han, a consultant on touch-screen displays at New York University. "The computer is a little untapped right now. It's time for the computer to start doing more."

By 2012, 40% of the world's cell phones will feature touch screens, compared with only 3% today, estimates Stuart Robinson, a director with consultancy Strategy Analytics. Most of these devices may have only one button—or no buttons at all. Touch-screen technology is being used to a limited degree on personal digital assistants and tablet PCs.

But bigger changes in how users call up features on devices are long overdue, researchers say. Today's phones, remote controls, and mainstream PCs look much like they did two decades ago, with raised buttons and dial pads here and there.

"If you went to sleep in 1982 and woke up today, you'd be able to drive today's computers as well as you could drive today's cars," says Bill Buxton, a principal researcher at software giant Microsoft (MSFT). "If you look at the computer experience, things have not changed very much."

Chips Propel Progress

Thanks in part to agents of change like Apple, innovation is on the way. Advances in the software and chips on the inside of devices are also facilitating changes on the outside.

Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, debuting for consumers this month, as well as more capable processors from chipmakers Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD), allow for more options in so-called input interface—the external display and keypad used to control a device.

"I don't think the technology and the processing power were there before," says Robert Nalesnik, senior director of marketing for mobile platforms at chipmaker Broadcom (BRCM). "Now you are getting to the point when you really have the horsepower to do it."

Change will also happen from the outside in, with new displays and ways of entering information transforming what machines can do and how they behave. New keypads, for example, could also change the way we type.

IBM (IBM) has developed a technology called ShapeWriter for typing on a touch screen using a stylus or a finger. Rather than pressing individual keys, a user would move his or her finger around the screen's keyboard to point out words, lifting a finger to indicate when a word is complete. Software would then match the pattern traced from letter to letter with that in a dictionary database.