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The most interest phrase I saw in this post was, "will multi-touch become important enough that Google has to include it in Android?" If Google failed to include multi-touch due to potential patent litigation, then one can conclude that including it in future releases of Android would require patent licenses. In general, such licensing is on a per-unit basis, but it is my understanding that Android is offered royalty-free. Such per-unit licensing would then cause Google to lose money on each Android unit sold. It would likely also require Google to provide a method of accounting for each Android license sold for later auditing.
One way out of patent license costs for Google would be a cross-licensing agreement with Apple or with Microsoft to share patents, but that seems unlikely.
Though not stated, something else to think about is that Google could wait to see how the whole thing plays out with Apple and Palm re: multi-touch. While we've seen some of Apple's huge portfolio of patents, to my knowledge, we haven't really seen what Palm has, though its statements seem confident. It will definitely be something very interesting to watch over the next year.
I'm not sure if Google would appreciate all such efforts, as it may also fragment the Android platform to the point that some apps work on some devices but not on all. Taken to an extreme, one could fork Android to make a more customized version that breaks APIs. OTOH, I don't know Android's licensing or API's.
Multi touch drivers are not easy to write and I'm sure multi touch is on the roadmap. Why would HTC put a capacitive screen inside their device when they could have put in a cheaper resistive touch screen to cut down on the bill of materials? Something tells me Google wanted to ship with that capability from day 1, but could not.
Anyway, we'll see what happens; 2009 still has a lot of months left in her!
Back to Google, half a year is still not very long comparatively speaking from a platform development perspective. Multi touch as an input method has to be baked into Android and accessible to all application via standard APIs. With the video you embedded above you can clearly see that while multi touch works, it is not the smoothest experience.
If I was Google I would want to work on that.
Like I said, 2009 still has a long ways to go. Multi touch is an inevitability across all mobile platforms.
However, as in recent Android posts I would like to point out some VB editorial policy stuff. We only report rumours if we have a way to double-check them. And we did as always.
On top of that in this case I can actually argue our opinion via some facts you can check yourself. The Multi touch hack is 2 months old by now. If you look at its code you'll find that it is original and commented Google code. However, Google decided to take out that code at some point. You'll still find some images in which the original Google code is in, though.
We tend to disagree on some points within VB, too. Personally, to me the whole discussion on what G1 hardware does is boring from day 1. I would not have cared if HTC decided to install Android on a '89 Soviet device. MG, however, likes to repeat his opinions on the keyboard etc. We'll see a lot of Android devices and what they are able to do is for OHA/the mobile eco system to decide.
I can only hope that MG Siegler is wrong concerning the gentlemen's agreement to disable multitouch, for the sake of innovation in the mobile industry.
If you watch lukehutch's videos of what works on g1 and what doesn't, you would learn that multitouch isn't actually built into the hardware. He uses a simple additional information available to make it look like apple's multitouch.
Difference:
iPhone uses a touch screen with individual wiring to each touch point (each pixel).
G1 uses a touch screen with a simple grid where x, y axis merge. (See the mentioned video to understand).
But yes Android isn't the limited one. Google has all rights to modify android to support the iPhone's hardware too. But till the patent nonsense is sorted out, it might be used on an iPhone only.
It is just a matter of time before Apple gives in.
"By uncommenting a bunch of lines in the synaptics touchscreen driver, and recompiling my kernel and replacing my boot.img - I was able to enable the debug logging of the touch input that tracks 2 fingers."
Source: http://www.ryebrye.com/blog/2008/11/17/proving-...
@R. I will not get into an examination of available code and commentary simply because I don't have the time for it.
We don't write stuff under the pretension that we know what Google/OHA is exactly doing. We don't and we've repeatedly said so. We only write about stuff we can report on and we are comfortable reporting.
It is our view that most of the discussion in the media on what functionalities are enabled by Android is foolish. When talking to different OHA folks early on it became clear to me that the status of these issues changes extremely fast. Android is only partly a debate on what technically is possible. For us it us much more important to view it as a constant negotiation on how OHA members want to use it for their purposes. As media we only can give updates on what the status of these negotiations is & point our readers towards the relevancy of the news.
Luke Hutch and I both confirmed this.
"It looks like the stuff you uncommented is just debug code, and the driver is still in fact reporting 2 finger tracking:" - Koush
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?...
"Actually, it turns out that if you read a little further down in the driver code (lines 187-200 of synaptics_i2c_rmi.c), you’ll notice that you don’t need to recompile your kernel at all to get multitouch working on the G1 — the kernel driver in fact already emits multitouch information!" - Luke
http://lukehutch.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/full-...
My conclusions after going through the code and scouring the web for reasons why it wasn't implemented in 1.0, as well as conversations with Google employees and all sorts of interactions with the community since the multitouch release are the following:
(1) The G1 was simply never intended to be a multi-touch device. HTC didn't spec it that way (their top leadership came out and said "it was designed to be a single-touch device"), Google didn't ask for them to design an MT-capable device, it wasn't on Google's list of things to do for 1.0.
(2) Apple's multitouch patent may not even cover the pinch gesture. So far they have not even approached me with a C&D, and I don't expect they will. (And anyway, I never made a cent off of this, and I am doing no more development on multitouch now that the capability is out there in firmware images that you can flash on your own phone.)
(3) Google *is* interested in multitouch capabilities, it's just nowhere near the top of their priority list. Anyone in the community could step forward today with a well-designed extension to the MotionEvent class that properly supports MT, and the Google guys and gals would vet it just like any other community submission, and it would stand as good a chance of making it into the codebase as anything else. (HOWEVER the Google Android engineers have been rushed off their feet for about the last two years straight, including lots of late nights and weekends, and the pace sped up if anything after 1.0, so they are so busy with their own internal priorities that the Android *platform* is only a community project in name at the moment, because the ones that can actually commit to the repository at the moment are mostly/all(?) Google engineers, and they're just plain flat-out busy... time will tell if that changes, or if their community module ownership handout system works.)
(4) Google will deal with legal issues if and when they come up, but that hardly stops them doing something they think should be done. Take a look at Book Search and YouTube ;-) (I know, I used to work at Google on Book Search...)
(5) Apparently the driver for a resistive MT-capable/iPhone-like touchscreen was checked into the git kernel tree after the 1.0 release, so we now have (at least?) two MT-capable drivers in the tree. This is barely surprising given the huge number of Android devices of every form factor currently in the pipeline. You can bet somebody wants to market the devices even if it means licensing from / fighting with Apple.
(6) I could go on, but basically put away your tinfoil hats, people.
Once you catch the vision of that, you will understand why MT conspiracies are ridiculous -- why would MT or other bling even be an issue when you're trying to accomplish so many far more difficult engineering tasks and meet a shipping deadline?
We actually did read the code early on. All of it. I co-sign your wish that people should do so as it's worth the time if you are in mobile. I actually co-sign your whole last comment if I may.
Look at my author profile and you'll see that we embraced covering Android extensively back in July. Back then various tech media folks felt we are idiots because of that (they may be right, but that's another issue). You'll also see that we also talk frequently to people, do some of our own research, play around with code, build some minor apps.
Personally I don't believe any conspiracy theories here and continue to be disinterested in any iPhone-Android platform-Pre-whatever phone comparisons. That's not been the rational behind MG's story, either, as I said before.
Right. The whole mobile industry had a decade to ship a device comparable to the iPhone, but apparently chose not to. The iPhone was so obvious, two years later there's still no competition. But I digress.
See for example here:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/28/apple-vs-pal...
Oliver
>>
Completely drunk sources also claim that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt likes Steve's tempura tofu too much to risk his gourmet pleasure over a stupid phone. And when I say "his gourmet pleasure," I really mean "his gonads."
<<
Jesus puts MG Siegler clearly into the same league as Apple-shill and pseudo-journo Jim Goldman 8-)
HTC Dream doesn't have what iPhone has.
Synaptics driver provides what is available even in a macbook.
Two finger click & scroll etc are used in macbook's touch pad.
This part of the internal code alone was commented out.
This is not protected by any patent.
Synaptics provides it and has to deal with it for itself.
Patented gestures are short-lived and can be easily countered
by a slight change.
That is very different from multi-touch used and patented in iPhone.
It has a matrix of touch sensors, one for almost every pixel manufactured by a German co. 'Balda'.
With HTC Dream, it would be impossible to detect jerky rotations, quick spin-unspins etc.
Android is not HTC Dream / G1 / ADP1 / ...
Even if it were, Apple's patent doesn't hold much against supporting this hardware.
It's time to scrutinize our IP laws and ensure that they are still fair and beneficial. I see plenty of room for improvement.
Therefore, if I could, I'd make free applications for android that implement all the multi-touch stuff and more. All for free. Nor google, nor HTC (or whoever makes the phone), nor me get money, but we bust apple's extreme greed.
Apple made smart move to patent multi-touch since they knew that somebody else would want it.
By law I would not allow Apple to patent that just because things like that stop technology to advance further. Apple is not the only company that has smart dev team.
Yet again, Google fails their own "do no evil" standards. The company is sad a joke that makes Microsoft look virtuous by comparison.
~LInux Addict
Oh, they sure did. And MS asked its competitors, not what could be described as its strategic parnters.
www.businessweek.com/microsoft/updates/up81022a...
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-Microsoft-was-on-war...
I can't say my name, and I can't give any source, but it's true than Apple does put pressure on Google for not adding feature, or even removing existing feature from Android which were not yet published. Theses pressures are not done through official PR but just in private between founders.
Apple brings a significant number of search through Safari and Google does not want thoses requests to go away with Apple replacing this with yahoo or whatever search engine.
Some removal requests are really stupid, they can be about the screen unlock pattern which has to be 4 digits long instead of 3, or how the scrollbar should react to touch.
The good part of Android is its open source license and I just hope theses features will be added by independent developers. However independent open source developers are usually very bad at UI and they don't have much ideas about design, sadly. It involves spending too much time on something they don't care for most of them.
In the end Apple could have conquered the U.S. market had it not signed an exclusive with AT&T.
Multitouch is so obvious that to expect it to hold as a patent in courts is unlikely. "Wow, touching more than one finger to a touch screen? AMAZING INNOVATION!"
I want multitouch on Android -- to the point of it being necessary because it's such an obvious/basic functionality to use more than one finger. I highly doubt Apple's patents are truly unique and non-obvious since I've seen multi-finger resizing in tech dating back many years. I expect to fully see it in Android (and not just from a developer mod).
I'll be very disappointed in Google if they don't get with it very soon and not let Apple run wild and dominate with obvious technology. Hurry it up, Google!