This looks to be a fantastic piece of technology. Sharp has announced a new LCD screen that not only allows for multi touch input, it also acts as a scanner. A user could, for instance, put a business card on the screen and scan it in. With a bit of refinement, fingerprint authentication should be possible as well.
All this is possible due to an optical sensor built into each pixel of the screen. Such a design eliminates the need for touch sensitive films within the screen, allowing for thinner designs.
Sample shipments are scheduled to start this month.
It would seem that such a design could be blended with Microsoft’s LucidTouch, to streamline its finger recognition abilities, eliminating the need for an external camera as currently prototyped.
The press release can be found here.
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