Vodafone is all thumbs on multitouch
Vodafone's claim that the H1 would support "multitouch" caught our eye, but it was eight hours before we discovered how fast and loose the operator was playing with the dictionary. In response to El Reg's questions Samsung finally admitted that in this context "multitouch" means one can touch the screen in different ways: such …
They can join the fine tradition of misnamed and misdescribed products... Samsung's "unitouch" can now join the Intel Non-Extreme Graphics, Apple's pre-OSX "multitasking" that was in fact cooperative task switching, and so on.
How many Samsung / Vodafone employees does it take to create a multitouch device? None; they simply redfine single touch (is that the correct antonym?) as multitouch. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Came across an excellent history of multitouch the other day by Bill Buxton, a pioneer in the field long before the iPhone (and now at Microsoft but an academic for long before that): http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
Often redefine the definition of service and value for me, so they are definitely old hands at this.
I'd say monotouch would be the more catchy trademark friendly way to say it.
Nokia 3310, now with Monotouch
Resistive screens are somewhat mildly multitouch in that 2 fingers pressing at the same time creates its own effect. On my WinMo PDA playing solitaire its very useful to slide a card quickly into place using 2 fingernails at each end point and a quick one-two tap of the fingers. If you hold both fingers in place a card sits at the middle point and theres even some small measure of pressure control too where you can balance a card at the quarter points.
Describing the H1 as multitouch reminds me of the way they use the term "unlimited".
It's a terrible bit of marketing to market a multiple gesture phone as multitouch.
Samsung seem to be in the habit of putting misleading labels on their products. Eg their "LED TVs" -- which of course are *LCD* TVs with LED backlights -- but try telling that to the Currys salesdroid who was convinced that each pixel was actually an individual LED.
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