Uh oh.
On at least a few occasions, Android developers have mentioned to me that the multi-touch sensors on certain Android handsets — especially the Nexus One — seemed a bit.. flaky. I’d had nothing but solid experiences while dabbling with multi-touch in all of the apps I could find that support it, so I chalked it up as a coding error on the developer’s part until something a bit more solid came forward.
Well, something a bit more solid has just come forward.
Our buddy Taylor Wimberly of AndroidAndMe was chatting with Robert Green of Battery Powered Games, who was reporting the same Nexus One multitouch sketchiness we’d heard of previously – but Robert had proof.
Robert threw together a simple multi-touch application called Multitouch Visible Test. As the name implies, it makes your multitouch input visible by drawing large circles beneath your fingers wherever the phone thinks they are. It’s all pure sensor data right from the phone; there’s not any data processing going on here, so there’s not a whole lot of room for software bugs on Robert’s end.
As you can see in the video below, the Motorola Droid seems to handle all of the default multitouch gestures with ease. The Nexus One, however, flounders; while it handles slow pinch-and-zoom motions just fine, it goes all kinds of crazy once your fingers get too close together. The output data gets flipped, reporting your fingers as being in the polar opposite locations of where they actually are.
It’s somewhat understandable how this bug slipped through the cracks: for standard pinch-and-zoom behaviors, things would seem to behave correctly enough that the difference may not be noticeable. It’s a different story with games, however; imagine having to control two things on the screen at one time, and having said things mysteriously rocket off in the wrong direction because your fingers got too close together. Suck.
It’s not a bug that’s likely to come up on a daily basis, but its not exactly trivial – and either way, a bug is a bug. If you have a drink tonight, cheers to the idea that this might be fixable with a software update.
Have you ever noticed any multi-touch oddities on the Nexus One (or any other Android handset)? Let us know in the comments.
honestly, no i haven’t. however, this helps me out in that i now know i won’t be buying a nexus one anytime soon. it’s supposed to be too nice of a phone to have a serious flaw like this.
Uh-oh here we go again. Last time we have issues regarding 3G, then now this one…
But wait a minute, this phone is what? Something like 3 months old? Just hold your horses yet, it’ll improve… oki?
Improve? Why would I want to spend $579 and hope it improves when I can get an iphone for the same price?
I’ve recently used both.
Nexus has intermittent touch-screen glitches, so that e.g. it sometimes registers “done” while I’m typing letters on the on-screen keyboard – I think it’s firmware because powering off/on fixes the issue. And I had initial problems with getting wifi to register, and pressing numbers in the right way so phone menuing systems would recognise them. But I’m over the learning curve now.
iPhone is a much more polished product, with no learning curve, but its camera and screen seem worse to me.
The crucial difference for me is software. You’ll be able to get great games on the iPhone, but it’s a heck of a risk writing business software for a platform where Apple can pull the plug at any time, so I expect the best teams to target Android.
This is a serious problem. Will they ‘recall’ now?
A serious problem that no one really seems to notice and one that might be fixable by a software update….. YEAH RECALL ALL THE PHONES!
Are you drunk? A software developer noticed it. Enough to build an app to prove it. MT works seamlessly on the Droid which probably means this is a N1 hardware problem, not a software one. You silly little Twit.
OK, who’ll be the first to call someone Hitler?
It’s not fixable with a software update. If you read the Android developer mailing list, you will see Google employees stating that the software works exactly as it should.
Yes, I’ve seen this behavior before on the Nexus One, particularly on the maps app – it goes spastic when your fingers get into certain positions.
That’s just weird.
Did they actually do any QA on this thing.
Are you asking if Google does any testing before releasing a new product? Goole, the company that made ‘beta’ a brand mark? Google of the buzz fiasco?
Google, the one that has the best search engine out there, the one with the best web-based email out there, the one with one of the best browsers out there? Google, the one that is never afraid of trying new features and experiments? Google the one that has revolutionized the way data is stored, analyzed and organized? Google, the one that offers more services than you are aware of?
Yes, that Google. Get off the Apple kool-aid. Other than your toy phone and a few other things (honestly, WebKit is the only thing I can think about right now and even that is a fork of a non-Apple project), Apple hasn’t done shit at all to benefit the industry overall.
this is a hardware thing….
has to do how the sensors are placed or something…
Why thank you for that wonderfully in depth insight into the problem… its like the sensors or something!
Dicks on the internet make it such a pleasant place.
And surprisingly his input was infinitely more useful to this conversation than yours. Nice Try, Eric.
So is it hardware or software — help me get to the bottomline!
the multitouch in it is a hack – that gets a little lost sometimes. look the video and you might ‘get’ how to do it and how to fake same kind of functionality on some “non mt” technologies.
This is a simple software issue at worst.
Who wrote that “multi-touch app” it might be the issue.
Either way solve this quickly someone.
Please post more info on what app that is…
My god, did you even read the article that you’re posting a comment on? The app does little more than draw the location of your touches that the multitouch API is reporting — so the likelyhood of this being a problem with the app is very low.
Also, the code on the two handhelds is the same!
Doesn’t HTC use substantially different ROM? More complete Exchange support, earlier multi-touch, etc.?
Mike is also ignoring the fact that the app (and multi-touch) runs seamlessly on the droid. It’s obvious this is a N1 hardware problem.
Couldn’t it be a driver related issue on the N1, thus possibly being resolved through a software update?
Can you post the app and the example code as well.
Would be great!
Thx
Oliver
Yesterday I noticed it would pinch zoom in the browser when I rolled my thumb across the surface. That’s strange and unexpected.
Hi,
I have both a Droid and a Nexus One and have been testing both for a few weeks.
The Nexus One does not “kinda suck” at multi-touch. I use it (a lot) every day, and the bug mentioned above, whilst certainly a bug which needs fixing, is not apparent in any noticeable way that seriously impacts the normal everyday user experience.
The title of your post, whilst certain to get a boatload of retweets, is inaccurate and misleading.
Common, you can do better than this.
@iboy
ps: I have no vested interest in any of this. It is just my personal opinion having tested the phones.
+1
Using a nexus pinch to zoom feature is completely unaffected. Notice that even after the coordinates are messed up it still interprets the gesture as doing the same thing at the same ratio. So the pinch result will stay the same. The only place this could be bad is in a game where the touch points and the screen really do need to be in sync.
End result is that day to day use continues to be a good experience. I dont care where it thinks im pinching. Just so long as it gets the ratio right.
It is a hardware problem and not a software problem. The Nexus one sports the same touch screen as the G1. A Google framework engineer acknowledged and confirmed the hardware flaw.
A software solution can be expected from Google to mitigate the problem but it won’t make it go away.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/msg/70e9dd235d519955
This is nothing new in Android. If I recall correctly the first developer to hack a G1 to demonstrate multi-touch made the same discovery a long time ago. I suppose it is news worthy that this was not rectified in the Nexus One.
Of course, as you said, there are often limits to how much correction you can do with broken/bad/crappy hardware.
i’d bet on a firmware bug.
Really? lol.
There is a reason this isn’t widespread all over blogs even though the Nexus One has been out for quite some time now.
Like the poster above me, this is largely irrelevant for 99.9% of everyday users and 99.9% of applications currently made.
Should it be fixed? Sure….do you feel the need to post in big bold letters that the Nexus One is somehow critically flawed to draw attention? I guess so…
Oh well
It is a problem all game developers facing. The emulators are basically unusable.
The screen in Nexus one is a Synaptics Clearpad 2000. Synaptics clearly quotes that
The Clearpad 3000 supports multi-touch (up to 10 fingers).
The Clearpad 2000 in our Nexus one supports two-finger touch gestures. Two-finger interaction and gestures (i.e., Pinch, Pivot Rotate).
See Synaptics website: http://www.synaptics.com/solutions/products/clearpad
As long as you are just pinching and pivot rotating, you face no problem.
Thank you for this very insightful link. Do you have any technical specifications on the model you are using? This seems to be one of the primary issues that Apple is suing HTC over since they announce the arrival of their CDMA version for Verizon. I’ve been waiting with baited breath but this is something that would seriously have me reconsider if not upgraded to the ’3000′ series of the said Synaptics device.
Pivot rotate of less than 90 degrees. Otherwise you get the axis flip. But again, that’s within the design parameters of the screen.
The nexus one does not support Multi Touch, only Dual Touch, this down to what Dhawal has said with regards to the Synaptics screen being used.
see here for more info:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=629224
I have noticed a weird issue with Nexus One where it doesnt translate my left hand gestures as smoothly as the gestures I make with my right hand. And this is using only 1 finger. Def some issues with multi-touch in general but the phone itself makes up for those downfalls.
Do you play guitar? My left hand barely works on capacitive touch screens. Calluses (I hope).
Genius way for them to get out of that Apple lawsuit. Kudos!
The notification light on that nexus is pulsing green. I’m pretty sure that’s only a feature of the latest Cyanogen mod, or available as a patch for a rooted handset.
If the former, that would be in 5.0.4, which is running kernel 2.6.33 and AOSP, not stock Android 2.1, all unreleased code, with new drivers. Not certified, and this is exactly the sort of bug that does crop up from time to time in CM (which, BTW, absolutely rocks.)
Might be worth checking that out.
I know what you mean — I wouldn’t be surprised if this bug came down to a problem with either the coding on the ROM in use (if it’s a custom ROM) or a problem with the application used for testing.
Not trying to even be devil’s advocate, but it’s a definite possibility. It’s not like this testing application is provided by HTC or anything.
I have a Nexus One with stock ROM on an unrooted handset, and I get the axis flip if I pivot rotate beyond 90 degrees. Also, the input gets real jumpy when your two fingers get close together until it jumps to one finger only.
hah
Looks like software to me…
looks like someone has simply got the maths wrong at the cross over point…
e.g. at the point of vertical crossover, y1 becomes y2 and y2 becomes y1…
However, it’s also making x1 swap with x2, and x2 swap with x1…
So you’re getting the horiztonal sides switching at the same point as the vertical switch.
A rumor of Somebody at Google got the math wrong? Watch out for share prices to drop sharply tomorrow….. im selling now :-)
Isn’t Android (the OS) open source and the manufacturer (HTC) external.
Perhaps this functionality wasn’t coded by ‘google’ or maybe coded by an aquired partner?
… or… maybe this is the beginning of the end, with the result being us all dead by 2012.
I use the multitouch feature all the time on my n1 in the browser and maps and haven’t noticed any issues/glitches. Not sure why that would be…
this is old, old news. the G1 had the same issue, and the N1 has the same hardware, so…
http://lukehutch.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/full-working-multitouch-on-the-t-mobile-g1-android-phone/
“the Synaptics screen is not a true 2D multitouch device. It is a 2×1D device, or contains two sets of orthogonal wires and firmware for analyzing the resulting two 1D projection histograms of capacitance across the screen.”
Agree not new, and the real credit should go to the dev who discovered it on the G1 first.
i’ve noticed multi-touch weirdness using wobble.
unrelated, but i’ve also had issues with my phone going to sleep one second after i unlock it. haven’t figured out yet if there’s a set of conditions that cause that behavior.
For those of you who think that somehow the code is wrong, I posted all of the source for everyone to look at and scrutinize. It’s pretty hard to say I somehow messed up the values when I passed x1,y1 and x2,y2 directly from the touch event to a draw method that puts circles of different colors there and does nothing more, but go ahead and check out this link to be sure :)
http://www.rbgrn.net/content/367-source-code-to-multitouch-visible-test
Thanks Robert!
I was able to reproduce this glitch with an app called ‘Simply Draw’ from the Android Market as well.
It’s certainly NOT obvious that it can’t be fixed with a software update. Time will tell – I suspect it can.
I’ve noticed the same thing on my HTC Hero. I had a game of pong with two fingers. Same exact thing happend. Seems like a big problem to me. The game was unplayable.
Old news this. Still unpleasant though.
If you have “dev tools” on the phone (for instance with cyanogenmod), select Pointer location to demonstrate this behaviour with different code.
Is the compiled app available somewhere for people to see this for themselves without having to compile the source?
This will effect a lot more than just games. Look at Google’s latest release, Google Earth. This could be a huge tamper on how Google Earth runs on the Nexus One.
Like others have said this is a hardware limitation that was also exhibited by the G1.
The issue is the way the screen senses your two fingers and calculates their location. It can physically NOT tell the difference between the two when the axis flip.
Having said that, there might be a way to write a “guessing/smoothing” algorithm that will track your finger and try to guess which one is which. Using not only position but also calculating the fingers vector.
Wow, it makes the superphone look bad. I hope the guys at Google have seen this video and are right on it.
I am on my second N1 the first one had constant issues with the touch screen multi and single touch… I also noticed that when the phone is charging my touch screen is all over the place… wonder if anyone else has the same issues and if they could test the multi touch when its plugged in…
SUPER PHONE MY ARSE.
GOOGLE IS SH!T.
seriously.
sorry to scream but enough with this company already. aside from search and maps they are nothing special. wooohhoo mail! big deal.
buzz sucks
orkut sucks
wave sucks
gears gone
lively gone
picasa whatever
android is a mess
they’re too smart for their own good.
hire some product and marketing people damn it!!!
exactly my thoughts… aside from maps, even search function has now competant rivals…
Android is awesome!
About the rest of the products mentioned above I tend to agree.
But Google definitely doesn’t suck.
Android is not bad, but I would certainly say that Google has to stop launching their products or services without PROPER testing, WAVE and BUZZ are perfect examples.
I thing the issue it whether you have dirty fingers or clean fingers … that why I always be careful I eat with my right hand and I wipe with my left hand and I never put bad things in my mouth.
this is simply not true. it has nothing to do with dirty fingers.
I guys, the real bad news is : Almost all the htc phones have this problem : Hero, magic, …
I’ve had the hardest time figuring out how to make it work ‘Ok’. Not good, not perfect, just Ok.
The good thing for me though is that the game for kids I wrote is the only one on the market with multitouch support (shameless plug : armaboing.com).
This is a serious concern though because it really is not usable at the moment. We as developper can’t use the multitouch feature wich is a big thing when you design controls for games.
But again in the Google group for Android Developpers we were asked not to file a bug on this matter :s
Android may have this problem, but by your own admission, you went looking for the problem searching out multitouch apps and still no bug instead you got a solid experience. The premise for this post was already on shaky ground.
If this is a real problem, hopefully it will be addressed.
wtf? if the iphone did this it would be all pitchforks and torches and hot tar and feathers and
wow. this is pretty ugly!! what a bad touchscreen! it makes you wonder how much its gonna last?/// the integrity of this products quality is rather.. uhmm.. what? i wouldnt buy this!! hope 4 the people that do that it gets fixed soon! ;}
p33p my vid!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgJ5i-7oRLA
I have a g1 and yes… the multitouch is very sh1tty… it is very noticeable for example when playing games like at a snes emulator or anything that explores the multitouch capability.