Touchscreens and multitouch technology make up a significant majority of Apple’s research into future user interface improvements, and the iPhone introduced some of those UI paradigm shifts into our increasingly mobile computing. Since almost all interaction with the iPhone—and presumably the hopefully imminent Apple tablet—involves a touchscreen, Apple hopes to improve on touchscreen technology by using each individual LCD pixel as a touch sensor.
Apple has filed a patent application, published today, for a “display with dual-function capacitive elements.” By mixing display and sensing functions into each individual pixel, it would make touchscreens thinner, lighter, and brighter than they currently are today.
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