Multi-touch found in HTC Diamond

22nd August 2008

Users for a long time have asked Microsoft to realize multi-touch in devices with touch screen running under Windows Mobile.
It many years have passed, but the first time such a method of input was realized not by Microsoft, but a company HTC. In particular, enthusiasts managed to detect hardware support of multi-touch in HTC Diamond and HTC Touch Pro devices. It should be noted that Multi-Touch is supported not in the entire field of touch screen, but only in the lower part, which is used to zoom images and to display the navigation buttons on the interface.
The company HTC has already announced that the lower part of the screen is a capacitive input device, but said nothing about support of Multi-Touch. In its turn, independent developers from the site XDAdevelopers created a utility NavDbgTool.exe, which clearly demonstrates how the lower navigation bar of the HTC Diamond device recognizes the simultaneous touch of several fingers.
It is noticeably that multi-touch is supported by a mini-notebook Asus Eee PC as well: although it does not have touch screen, the touch pad (instead of the mouse) supports the management of movements of several fingers.
For Microsoft, it would be a great mistake not to include support of Multi-touch in its future operating system Windows Mobile 7. Now that iPhone has demonstrated the convenience of data input with two fingers, no decent smartphone will be able to do without this important feature.