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Qeexo Co/YouTube

Think 3D Touch is good? How about a touchscreen that knows the angle of your finger

And best of all, it doesn’t require any fancy hardware

APPLE’S 3D TOUCH may have received much attention for its ability to recognise hard and soft touches, but there could soon be another way of recognising how you touch a screen.

Startup Qeexo has figured out a way to help standard touchscreens detect the angle your finger is at when touching it.

The software, called FingerAngle, detects the pitch and yaw (the horizontal and vertical axis) of a person’s finger on the screen and uses that to complete different actions.

Normally when you want to zoom out or rotate on your phone, you have to use a second finger to pinch. Here, you can do that by twisting your finger to increase or decrease volume, or zoom in and out.

By tilting your finger, you can use it to scroll up or down on a page, making it more suitable for smaller screen devices like smartwatches.

qeexo fix Qeexo Co / YouTube Qeexo Co / YouTube / YouTube

The best part is FingerAngle doesn’t require new hardware to work. It’s a software update that uses an algorithm to detect what you’re doing.

Qeexo already has worked with smartphone manufacturers like Huawei, which saw it bring knuckle gestures to the P8 and Honor 7.

That technology can distinguish between fingertip, knuckle, nail and stylus and allowed users to take screenshots by tapping their knuckle against the screen or launch applications by drawing symbols.

Read: What’s next for the Nest Thermostat? Solving your immersion woes >

Read: This new smartphone battery charges to almost half-capacity in five minutes >

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Author
Quinton O'Reilly
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