KDDI is developing a new type of smartphone that you can experience on the touch panel the feel of pressing the keyboard

As a bottleneck in changing models from conventional feature phones to smartphones, I think that there are a couple of people who cite the reason why the touch feeling of the touch panel is a bit weak,Wireless Japan 2011, A smartphone equipped with a new type touch panel aimed at improving the operation feeling was exhibited as a reference.

When I tried using the touch and try corner, I tried to precisely reproduce the feeling of clicking like operating the keyboard when typing characters etc. by vibrating etc., I found that the speed of the response and the touch feeling very close to the hardware keyboard I was surprised.

Variation of the feeling of operation of "touch-panel loaded smartphone reproducing click feeling" is as follows.Wireless Japan 2011At the KDDI booth of KDDI, a new smartphone with click feeling was displayed at the time of input reference. By installing a Haptic touch panel that combines "vibration function" and "pressure sensor function" developed by Kyocera on a smartphone, it gives a feeling of operation as when using a keyboard on the touch panel, The touch panel is designed to be used with peace of mind for those who are concerned about operation.


Demonstration machines capable of experiencing three input patterns were installed. "Click input mode" suitable for sink type person who mainly input with thumb


If you apply more than a certain amount of force, the click feeling will come back when pushing the hardened key a lot. As women were operating, there were scenes where the power was insufficient and did not respond, so it might be for men who prefer a heavy click feeling.


"Touch input mode" that is suitable for people of decided typing that was able to become a touch operation


If you operate to push the key lightly, you will find that the finger comes back with a feeling that is quite close to the feature phone's numeric keypad. Since smartphones do not respond at the time of input, it is a very difficult technique to input characters without looking at the screen, but with this touch panel, it seems that you can input while like a feature phone.


On the menu screen, when touching an icon or moving between icons, vibration was transmitted to the fingertip, and when pushing the icon, clicking feeling like pressing a clicking button was set to be transmitted.


As a result of actually touching, the click feeling when the icon was pressed fairly realistically reproduces the feel like the numeric keypad of the feature phone like the touch input mode.


Although it was said that "commercialization" and its timing was "undecided", if it were to be installed in smartphones that will be released in the future, it seems to be one that will boost the model change from feature phones.