New screen technology simulates physical buttons (video)

There’s nothing quite as reassuring about typing as the clicking sound of a typewriter marking every keystroke. So while smartphones have become the most quiet method of text input using touchscreens, you can’t quite reach that level of blind typing helped not only by seeing what you’re typing, but also by feeling and hearing. Second-largest Japanese carrier KDDI took on this issue and is working on bringing physical dimension to typing – haptic feedback and a clicking sensation should all contribute to faster, more intuitive operation of a handset.

To achieve that, KDDI developed a touchscreen in concert with Kyocera, but while that’s only a prototype, it promises a lot. Currently, the screen doesn’t support multitouch, which means that you can’t input text using two fingers simultaneously, but that will be fixed in the final version. The impressive demo below shows how you can get a different feeling and make use of the new technology not only when typing, but when navigating through a menu with different haptic feedback when you hover over or press an icon. Feel free to check out the video below and share your opinion about the technology.