Needs better touchscreen

[Loonie]

Oqo are also very gone.

I much prefer the resistive touch screen for this kind of device. I still use Bhajis Loops to make music on my old Palm TX, even though I have Caustic on my phone. Both very nice, but it's so much better drawing notes on the screen with a stylus than trying to draw them with my not-very-thin finger.

The only complaints I have about my Pandora's touch screen is the lack of pressure consistency across the screen area and the twenty mega-newton pressure required to operate it.

 

[thatgui]

I don't know whether anyone is milking the cash cow but Wacom graphics tablets have been around since 1984 so most of the patents would have expired by now and Wacom isn't the only company making them.

I guess ED is not interested in patents, but readily available hardware. Maybe you can find some solutions, and present them ?

The Oqo pocket computer used an electromagnetic digitiser (incidentally a Wacom) so why can't the Pyra? The Oqo company was also very small.

As far as I know the various models of the Oqo all were sold with price points far above $1000 in mind, maybe they had more "clearance" reagarding costs for including the digitiser ?

 

[Klumpen]

The only complaints I have about my Pandora's touch screen is the lack of pressure consistency across the screen area and the twenty mega-newton pressure required to operate it.

I couldn't aggree more.

 

[xiongxioi]

I once got struck by a stupid lightning and got the urge to buy a samsung tablet with Digitiser, thought I could draw things on it. It turns out to be completely useless, because, I would always want to near my workstation when I'm trying to get anything done, and even if I would want to draw anything, it's just easier to do it with a pen and a piece of paper. That was such a big waste of money that should be spent on something else, like ice cream or a new desk. 

What I'm saying is that, people who are likely to draw alot, and take notes, would always prefer to use pen and paper, or on their work station's tablet. Giving Pyra a digitiser is like nintendo decided to give wii  a controller the size of a tea tray and die in 3 hours. It's a solution looking for problems, there's no application that can be improved by 10 folds if Pyra would come with digitiser. 

This being said, resistive or capacitive does not matter that much if you usually use the nubs for mouse control, which is how I use my pandora. Double clicking and right clicking with the stylus is something I can never master along with breathing in space. I'm ok with either one that's easier for ED. (Even though pandora's screen is a touch screen, I kinda feel it should be renamed to a stab screen or punch screen, it doesn't respond the way I expect it to at times.)

 

[megaminxwin]

The point is, while a capacitive touchscreen is good for phones and tablets, this is not a phone or a tablet. This is a machine that is much better suited for serious work, and has a full desktop. A resistive touchscreen just works better on this. Capacitive screens are more expensive, they're less accurate, they're slower... it just doesn't make sense for this. Let's close this thread before it gets out of hand...

Also, am I the only one who has had no problems at all with my touchscreen? I find it very easy to press and it works perfectly every time.

 

[sebt3]

Yes, I for one is looking for a better touchscreen than what we have in current pandora. Should I say I'm looking for a resistive one ?

 

[xiongxioi]

Also, am I the only one who has had no problems at all with my touchscreen? I find it very easy to press and it works perfectly every time.

It's totally possible that lucky people like you would not voice their opinion. I hate pandora's keyboard and shoulder buttons with a passion, so I will go on great length to whine and complain about them every time. On the other hand, _wb_ likes it, so what we say May or May not mean anything.

I guess pandora would not ship with android, so having a capacity screen does not make much sense. I also don't use multi touch very often. We could always rely on virtual key mapping(or what ever it is called) to get around most android games with virtual dpad and on screen buttons.

 

[bzar]

Is it possible the screens would vary that much? Mine works fine. Needs about as much pressure as it takes to push a pencil forward on a table (=almost, but greater than nothing) .

 

[PokeParadox]

Also, am I the only one who has had no problems at all with my touchscreen? I find it very easy to press and it works perfectly every time.

It's totally possible that lucky people like you would not voice their opinion. I hate pandora's keyboard and shoulder buttons with a passion, so I will go on great length to whine and complain about them every time. On the other hand, _wb_ likes it, so what we say May or May not mean anything.

I guess pandora would not ship with android, so having a capacity screen does not make much sense. I also don't use multi touch very often. We could always rely on virtual key mapping(or what ever it is called) to get around most android games with virtual dpad and on screen buttons.

The Pyra will fake basic multi-touch for the common uses (pinch to zoom, etc)

 

[Neelix]

Also, am I the only one who has had no problems at all with my touchscreen? I find it very easy to press and it works perfectly every time.

The production of the Pandora has involved at least 3 batches of touch screens. Touch screens in different batches react to pressure differently. A large portion of the Rebirth and 1 Ghz edition units included a touch screen that only responds to a fairly small pressure range which requires rather more force than one would expect. Some units however do have rather more sensitive touch screens.

- Neelix

 

[EvilDragon]

Is it possible the screens would vary that much? Mine works fine. Needs about as much pressure as it takes to push a pencil forward on a table (=almost, but greater than nothing) .

Yes, we've got four different screens.

The first one was pretty good (considered as the best by a few people), with a very responsive touchscreen.

Then one batch had the issue that using the touchscreen without stylus doesn't really work - it's way too thick and you need to press it a lot.

About 200 Pandoras are affected by that.

The later one is okay, but not as good as the first one (though I like the enhanced contrast better).

For the Pyra, we're getting our own touchscreen made, so it should stay consistent.

 

[Klumpen]

For the Pyra, we're getting our own touchscreen made, so it should stay consistent.

 

[WizardStan]

That is not what that meme is for!

 

[xiongxioi]

Holy cow, ED. You would always surprise me. No wonder it cost 70 euros, but I guess it gotta worth the investment. I'm so hyped, since all of pandora's pains in the butt are gone. I wonder how many you need to buy to get your own touch screens.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

resistive screens may recognise up to 16 pressure levels but electromagnetic digitisers can recognise up to 1024 pressure levels (e.g. the Galaxy Note 3) or even 2048 pressure levels (the Intuos 4 graphics tablets). That's a big difference.

Actually, no it isn't. Of course you can differentiate more levels with your hand (though you'll get by far not even close to 1024), but what will you need it for? The screen is way too small to do anything artistic that would actually need that much levels (even when using a large external screen), pretty much anything else has no need for such accuracy anyway. 16 levels are simply already enough for such a small screen if they are well spread over the pressure range. The screen of the Pandora is already doing quite nicely concerning that and we have no information yet on how many pressure levels the new ones will be able to differentiate, anyway.

so most of the patents would have expired by now and Wacom isn't the only company making them.

Do you really think any modern tablet out there works just with 30 years old patented technology? Wacom regularly patents all sorts of stuff, even when using that old technology you'll still run into a bunch of other patents. Due to the massive market share hardly anyone would be willing to take those to court, e.g. due to prior art. Check e.g. this list. 3rd party manufacturers rather pay license fees, which allows Wacom quite some control over how advanced (or expensive) those alternative products may get.
Additionally, non-Wacom stuff is a nightmare on Linux driver-wise.

 

[jorlinn]

The current screen used on my 1GHz Pandora is more like a scratch-screen than a touch-screen. Dragging windows and files is a nightmare on my pandy.

Using the nubs for cursor control is more or less OK, but using an analog nub to simulate a mouse button is too much hit/ miss right now.

My vote is for a better touch-panel, but it better be resistive.

If possible, I want the nubs to have digital controls integrated, so you can choose what control to use depending on the use case.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

See ED's post on this page, one of the 4 different types of touch screens used for the Pandora had serious problems with its minimum pressure. My 1GHz's screen is so sensible, I don't need to put any pressure on the stylus at all, even though I'm using a protective foil.

 

[ZetaNeta]

Once you can use you nail (which is my main stylus for iPaq 2210), or maybe a screwdriver (my main stylus for a DSi XL) on a capacitative TS, call me.

I know they are "damn easy" to scratch, but you hand will adapt to the errors of the scratched TS.

And i agree that it will be just damn expensive to licence something even similar to wacom

 

[asdfffdsa]

Well ED says he ordered the most sensitive resistive touchscreen he could.  And I certainly hope the sensitivity is much better because my Pandora's touchscreen is kind of a nightmare.  I have to press extremely hard and I have no confidence that dragging motions won't drop in and out (not to mention the edges of the screen are practically dead zones).  It was quite a while ago that I completely gave up on the touchscreen and switched to using the analog sticks exclusively (cumbersome in itself but better...).  Guess I got one of the bad screens

A lot of people here are saying that a good resistive touchscreen actually has a lower response time and is more accurate and reliable than a capacitative.  While I've personally never used a resistive touchscreen I liked, I'll just assume the people here have experience with higher quality resistive touchscreens than I've ever used and trust that the quality will be good this time.

 

[TrashyMG]

My 1Ghz unit I has the worst touchscreen out of the three I own, although I wouldn't consider it too horrible.   My First Batch and Rebirth units seem a lot more sensitive.