I've been emailing Smule, the creators of iPhone apps like Ocarina, about the possibility of Smule Android apps. They said the main reason they haven't is because Android doesn't support "true multi-touch", meaning more than two touch inputs.

Does anyone know why this is, and will it be implemented in the near future?

Look up capactive vs resistive screens and then go back to your buddy at Smule to discuss this more.

Nate

its not a limitation of android, if anything it may be some phones dont support it... but the droid does, try pinch to zoom, no way that works without true multitouch

While "true multi-touch" does exist on Android, the question is how many simultaneous inputs can it handle? This is what the OP is talking about. We all know the Droid can do 2, but is there proof of it being able to recognize 3 points at once? To do something like Ocarina, it would take at least 4 simultaneous inputs i believe.

I would think that would be a feature of the application, not the OS. We know that two touches are legal in some apps for the Droid (Gallery, Maps, Browser) but not in some legacy apps...like I just tried Steamy Window. It will only recognize one touch. I tried draging three fingers across the screen. The finger that touches the screen first wins but the other two are ignored.

Some times a multi touch system recognizes one tuch as the toucher(that can swipe) and the second as just an anchor. It seems like in WinMo with a touch screen I ran into that on most touch apps.

There are big differences in various types of capacitive touch screens.

Nate

Smule actually talks to Google regularly, and they've been told that Android will NEVER (my emphasis) have true multitouch. When asked why, Google only says "it's a complicated issue."

Can we assume that means it's a patents and legal issue?

Probably because of market fragmentation. There are so many Android devices out there, and some even have resistive screens. There would be no way to guarantee that a multitouch-aware app would work on EVERY Android device out there, even among the same OS version.

Google probably tries to make their OS as broadly compatible as possible, without having a dramatically different user experience on different hardware.

there was a test done awhile back comparing multitouch capabilities of the iphone, incredible, droid, and nexus one... and maybe the pre too? anyway, it had an interesting video demonstrating exactly what was going with all of that and it shows that the droid's multitouch is definitely inferior, albeit functional for what we can do with it... i'd try and find the link right now but i'm walking out the door and just wanted to get this out

On one of the recent video reviews of one of the new phones, (Droid X, Droid 2, etc), they spoke about true multitouch. They demonstrated it by showing that if you held one key pressed on the screen, while then pressing other keys, the additional keys would be recognized. Phones without true multitouch did not see these keypresses. If I recall correctly, they said the new Droid did have it.

This is consistent with what Nate said above.

rwdfan, do you have a link for the video?

No, I did not pay too much attention to the source at the time. I am quite certain it was one of the plethora of vids posted on this site. I am also pretty sure it was a Droid X video.

Do you remember what they were demonstrating the multitouch on? Was it the new keyboard? And was it just two seprate inputs that they used or was it more than two?