Researchers develop a special screen protector that makes touchscreens react faster
When you tap on your phone’s display, it reacts instantly, or at least that’s what you think because based on today’s standards, the latency in touchscreen displays in most phones is around 80ms. This lag is almost imperceptible when you tap on the screen, but it becomes more obvious when dragging your finger across it, like when you’re trying to draw.
Even though devices like the iPad Pro combined with the Apple Pencil are extremely responsive, it’s still not 100% lag-free, but researchers think that they could get it close to zero latency by creating a unique screen protector that features a series of extremely tiny bumps.
This screen protector was created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group. These bumps measure just 5 microns high which means that it’s practically invisible to the human eye. The idea behind these bumps is that as your finger (or stylus) moves across it, it creates a very subtle acoustic vibration that can be picked up by the phone’s microphone.
Based on the vibrations and combined with software, the phone then tries to determine and predict where your finger tip or stylus is moving and the UI will update accordingly. Based on their tests, the use of this screen protector actually reduced latency to 28ms and 16ms in perceived latency.
It’s actually a pretty cool concept, although whether or not this screen protector will actually get commercialized is anyone’s guess, but it could be a concept that smartphone manufacturers could apply to their future displays.
Source: Gizmodo