Importance (or lack thereof) of multitouch?

S

So Blessed

New member
Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a new phone but I'm not sure what to get just yet so I have a couple questions. One, does the Palm Pre have pinch and zoom multi touch like the iphone? Second, (in your opinion) how important is the pinch and zoom feature for ease of use of the web browser when the device has double tap zoom? Thanks for your help.
 
I don't think Pre has multitouch, but not positive.

I personally think pinch zoom is nice, but not necessary. If you are using a browser with either a slightly reformatted layout to minimize the need to zoom (i.e. Opera Mini) or a browser with a good implementation of double tap zoom (most, nowadays), I think it works just as well. What is more important to the experience IMO is kinetic scrolling.
 
Ok, ya know how on a computer with a scroll mouse, you move the wheel to make a page move up or down?
and how when the wheel stops moving, the page or list stops moving? That's NOT kinetic scrolling.

Essentially kinetic scrolling is where you can flick your finger across the screen to make the screen/widgets/page/list move. But unlike the mouse wheel example, it doesn't always stop when your finger leaves the screen.
say that you're using KS to scrool through a library of ummmm.... 50 pics that you have on your phone's memory card. One flick can scroll through 5, 10, 20 pics, depending on the hardware, how well kinetic scrolling is handled by the device, etc etc.

Heres a vid of a guy using kinetic scrolling to go through a list of what's on his device-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdgU1oAImfI

Apple isnt the only phone to have it. Many, many mobiles do now. Tho, many of them don't handle it as well as the iphone does. Winmo 6.5 improved the winmo devices for it, but Gates still hasn't caught up to Jobs in this case.

eh, doubletap actually works a lot better for me. some of the gestures used by the iphones are a two-handed operation and the doubletap is a single-handed operation.
I dont like having to set down my food to operate my phone when I'm eating my lunch.
 
I cant say for 100% certainty, but pretty much every smartphone that has come out in the last year and a half has it in at least half the applications, and quite a few of the newer media phones also have it. (at least the ones with decent processors and touch screens).
The htc G1 had it. and did a pretty good job of it.
BTW, Android (the OS android, I mean) supports multi-touch. The G1 wasnt programmed for it, and did a mediocre job of it when somebody did program it for it (was it the programming or the hardware?) but it can at least support it.
 
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