An Analysis on the Utility of Toshiba's Capacitive Display Smartphone

Many news sites are reporting about the leaked Toshiba roadmap, which details the Toshiba K01, a landscape QWERTY slider that resembles the Touch Pro but has a capacitive touchscreen. Will Windows Mobile 6.5 be able to make use of the capacitive touchscreen to warrant the upgrade? The short answer is no, unless Toshiba makes some UI overlays and improvements that will add value to the K01.

When launched, the K01 will most likely come with Windows Mobile 6.5, which is a worthy operating system, especially when viewed against more popular contenders like the iPhone, which has a capacitive touchscreen. Capacitive touchscreens are more consumer-friendly in that it relies on touch, where as resistive touchscreens found on typical Windows Mobile devices rely on pressure to activate the screen. The benefit to capacitive touch is that you can use more gestures, like two-finger pinch and zoom, while the downside is that you can't use your screen with gloves on in cold weather. Resistive touchscreens require more accurate presses, and often require the use of a stylus, making them clunky, but the upside is that you can have handwriting recognition like that found in Microsoft Transcriber, found on most phones dating to even before the Pocket PC moniker.

Using capacitive touchscreen is great, but not enough user interface enhancements in Windows Mobile 6.5 are ready to take advantage of the capacitive touchscreen. Early, leaked builds of Windows Mobile 6.5 do not show gesture supports (such as pinch and zoom). Moreover, gesture support like the touch and rotate to zoom in on an image is part of the UI overlay created by HTC in the HTC Album application for pictures, not a bundled Microsoft application.

Furthermore, using capacitive touch at this time may hinder users of Windows Phone rather than help them. Such is the case if users rely on handwriting input and support, such as users of programs like Transcriber or Calligrapher. In this case, accurate stylus input may still be necessary to have a "mini Tablet PC" experience.

Adding capacitive touch right now is like the BlackBerry Storm experience. The Storm was criticized by tech reviewers in that it was unpolished because it was slapping a touchscreen on an OS that wasn't really touch-optimized. Adding capacitive touch is adding a display technology that isn't optimized for Windows Mobile 6.5 at the moment.

One can argue that capacitive touch on the K01 will make it Windows Mobile 7-ready. Windows Mobile 7 is rumored to support more gestures, making it a natural evolution for capacitive touch. However, device manufacturers do not offer OS upgrades to a major OS revision (such as 6.5 to 7) unless it is the latest generation hardware offered before the upgrade. More than likely, there will be other devices offered by Toshiba before Windows Mobile 7 hits in 2010--such as the K02, making a K01 upgrade to Windows Mobile 7 unlikely--at least through official means.

In essence, capacitive touchscreens to hit the Windows Mobile platform is a big deal, but at this time there isn't much utility offered to make it a worthwhile deal for consumers.