Look Ma, No Buttons

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The method could let a user type 30 to 40 words a minute, compared with 15 words typical for handwriting, says IBM researcher Shumin Zhai, who is hoping to offer the technology to carriers and handset makers.

Innovative Applications

Touch-screen technology can also multiply a device's features—enabling, say, a cell phone to double as other devices by doing away with dozens of specialized buttons required for specific tasks such as playing music and video. "Your phone has become a Swiss Army knife," says Nalesnik. "It's become very confusing."

But a phone equipped with a touch screen can offer separate, virtual buttons and screens for each function. So when you use it as a music player, the phone's interface only displays the pause, play, and fast-forward buttons and playlists, for example. What's more, new functions and buttons can be added to the phone with simple over-the-air software downloads.

As touch-screen technology takes off, so will haptics—a technology that makes a touch-screen button feel like a real button. On Jan. 17, Samsung said its SCH-W559 touch-screen phone will use haptics from a company called Immersion (IMMR), which holds more than 600 existing and pending patents on this technology.

Its VibeTonz technology makes a virtual key vibrate when pressed, so users feel like they are pressing real buttons. The same technology will debut this year in casino gaming touch-screen displays from 3M (MMM), letting users play multiple games on the same screen.

Meanwhile, gesture-based controls could make maps easier to use. You could zoom in on a map displayed on your cell phone or your ultramobile tablet PC by simply moving the device closer to your face.

A startup called InvenSense, whose funders include chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM), sells sensors that let users navigate phone menus by moving a handset to the left and right (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/18/07, "Qualcomm's Crystal Ball"). This year the company’s technology, which lets users scroll through menus with gestures, will be used in mouse and TV remote control. (InvenSense hasn’t yet disclosed the manufacturer.)

In the first half of 2007, Perceptive Pixel plans to start selling 8-foot-wide touch screens to blue-chip corporations. The so-called multitouch displays, already used by the military, can take input from several fingers and several people at the same time.

So if you are looking at a hundred photos on such a screen, you might grab several with one finger's touch and group them together. With another hand, you might simultaneously zoom in on an image. "It simulates very closely how we interact with [actual things and paper] in the world," says Jeff Han, the NYU consultant who's also the company's CEO.

As Common as a Mouse

Of course, touch screens do have their faults: Smudges and scratches can make working on them a nuisance. And countless Wii remotes have already been thrown across the room by overly enthusiastic gamers.

Manufacturers are hard at work developing technology to address these problems. Synaptics' ClearPad touch screens, for instance, are made of clear plastic that's more durable than other materials. Nintendo has devised a wrist strap to keep the Wii controller in place.

Perceptive Pixel hopes to sell its screens to film companies looking for better ways to compile storyboards and to corporations for use in brainstorming meetings. "We are really encouraged by how many companies have contacted us," Han says. "I firmly believe this kind of stuff will eventually become as ubiquitous as a computer mouse."

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.