HTC Patents Stylus for Capacitive Touch Screens
News has appeared of a new patent that actually sounds as if it might come to market, and soon. Smartphone maker HTC has patented a simple stylus that works with capacitive touch screens. These are the touch screens in the iPhone and other smartphones like the various Android handsets on the market. They are designed to be operated by fingers touching the screen, and the technology does not work with the stylus. Touch a stylus to a capacitive screen and it won’t be recognized. This prohibits such screens from using technology that requires precise control, just as writing on the screen with a stylus.
The HTC magic stylus sounds simple in theory. It is a standard pen shaped stylus that can be used to touch the screen precisely and to write on the screen. It works with standard capacitive touch screens via a magnetic tip on the stylus. This would imply the HTC stylus could be used with existing devices as it doesn’t require special digitizers.
This could open up mobile devices like the iPhone, or HTC’s own Android smartphones, to uses not currently possible. It sounds like the stylus would be cheap to produce, and that makes it highly likely we will actually start seeing HTC make these. What isn’t clear is if HTC would license the technology to other phone makers or restrict the stylus use to their own products. HTC produces smartphones with both the Android and Windows Mobile operating systems.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
How could HTC possibly restrict the stylus _use_ to their own products if it’s supposed to work with any standard capacitive screen?
Technically they couldn’t, but they might only make it available with their own handsets. That’s the purpose of a patent.
What about the Pogo Stylus that’s been out for awhile?
http://tenonedesign.com/stylus.php
Yeah there are numerous stylii available for capacitive screens. On my second one for my iphone … it’s so easy to lose without a silo!
Sweet! That would mean brighter more visible screens due to lesser amount of layers & ability to write on them!
As Manny says, Ten One have stylus that work – the Pogo & Sketch. I’ve got both and like most of these things their design usually incorporates a metallic body which acts as a conductor from the skin of the holder. Nothing really magic about it. Unfortunately, as I could use something that doesn’t rely on skin.
My main concern is the size of the stylus’ tip.
Current capacitive styluses/stylii/whatever, such as the Pogo ones mentioned above, appear to have tips that are far too large for my purposes (fine handwriting & drawing).
If this HTC capacitive stylus has a fine tip more in line with what you’d expect out of a conventional pen or stylus, though, consider me interested.
Title should read “HTC APPLYS for Patent for Stylus for Capacitive Touch Screens”. THIS IS NOT A PATENT, IT IS A PUBLISHED PATENT APPLICATION.
It’s like telling everyone that I got a job working for Google, when all I really did was fill out a job application.