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.
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