I love learning about what technologies power each part of my gadgets and the upcoming Storm is no exception. I just got confirmation that the upcoming BlackBerry Storm is packing a Synaptics’ touchscreen. It turns out that the Storm is using Synaptics’ ClearPad custom module. This part is what enables multi touch input as well as other useful functions such as copy-and-paste.
As many of you already know the Synaptics’ ClearPad on the Storm is also setup with dual tactile feedback. This means that the screen/button will push in slightly and provide localized haptics (vibration) to ensure precision.
Its interesting to see that after RIM’s dominance with creating smartphone keyboards they went to another source for their touchscreens. Synaptics is not a small company by any means but I thought RIM would design/create the touchscreen themselves. It makes me wonder if RIM has the patent to the clicking capability of the Storm touchscreen.
According to Synaptics this ClearPad technology is also in the upcoming and recently showcased HTC G1 touchscreen Google Android phone.
You can read more about the ClearPad technology at this link.
