A post on the Sony Ericsson Blog announced that they will be bringing the ability to "pinch-to-zoom" in some instances onto the Xperia X10 family of phones in Q1 2011. While this shouldn't be a big deal with modern Android phones, this announcement represents a change from Sony Ericsson's previous statement that the hardware in the X10 family was not capable of multi-touch.
The reasoning behind their change of stance on multi-touch is due to a "huge reaction" from their consumers and engineers that were "able to change the driver and firmware for the touch digitizer to make some multi touch gestures work."
At this point, it seems like they won't be bringing "true" multi-touch onto the handset, as it will just be dual touch enhanced for the browser and Google Maps. Third party apps should also be able to take advantage of the pinch/zoom, but they might be slightly buggy in some instances.
Check out the video below of what can be expected of the handset after the update is released:
Engadget notes that in the video, "Angry Birds doesn't quite pinch and zoom smoothly. So yeah, it's not all sunshine, but at least there's something to look forward to. "
There will be some limitations of the feature, which is pointed out in the post:
The digitizer in the X10 is not perfect when it comes to multi touch, there will as an example be situations like when the movement of the two fingers cross each other on the X- or Y-axis that could cause strange behavior.
Other Sources: Android Central, AndroidGuys, Engadget, EuroDroid
Image from Engadget
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