I will say it again… The G1 surely does not have all of the bells and whistles… Not yet. One of the nifty things about that Apple iPhone is the multi-touch capability that we are not to big to admit is pretty cool. A sly coder going by the name RyeBrye found synaptic driver code that was commented out and after recompiling the kernel with the code back in was able to track multiple fingers. The question begs why not utilize the capability if it exists. There are two schools of thought on this given below (and commented on by RyeBrye) by an Unofficial Google employee, morrildl.
• HTC has specified that the G1 will have a single-touch screen. (This is significant, because their spec is for single touch for the G1, this means that they could in the future source touchscreens that are not multi-touch capable - so just because a certain run of G1s might have a multitouch capable screen, they have the liberty to swap out parts [and they may already have G1s out in the field that don't have a multi-touch capable screen])
• The other issue is with how the driver reports the width of the touch. It appears that the “w” element is the same on both of the fingers (although this might just be a quirk in the driver code that was commented out - since it does seem to be based on pressure and putting fingers on opposite corners and pressing lightly still shows a 1 for “w” - but placing 2 fingers close together and pressing hard will show a 15 for “w” - so I’m not entirely convinced of this)
Whatever the reason this is definitely good news and a step in the right direction. We probably won’t see any multi touch apps any time soon but it is only a matter of time before it peaks someone else’s interest.
What do you guys think is the reason for the lack of dual touch functionality?
[RyeBrye]