Jackito TDA - a fingertip-touchscreen PDA!

[Colin Dunstan]

Novinit, a French company, has developed Jackito, the world's first TDA or Tactile Digital Assistant. The TDA is based on touch-screen technology and relies entirely on your thumbs for input. Supposedly, on average, when a user presses a touch screen, the finger's contact area is 100 times larger than that of a stylus and the stylus exerts 100 times more pressure on the screen than a finger. Sounds good, but wouldn't you also hate those ugly thumb prints on your gadget screens? You can read more about fingers vs. stylus here.

The Jackito device features 3ACTIL, a fingertip-sensitive 4.5" screen (now that is big!), which doesn't require a stylus and offers an unlimited number of touch-sensitive virtual keyboards, designed for both thumbs. More interestingly, one variant of the device is available with a high-contrast bistable display, something along the lines of the Sony Librie e-book reader! Read more about the specs here.

Now the big bummer: Jackito's printed circuit board also features a silicon chip that provides a unique logical ID number for each PCB, from a billion possible combinations (the same type of chip is used on smart cards in secure payment systems). DRM-fans will love it, others (us) will hate it.

The price: starting at USD $600.

[Chaos]

Originally Posted by Morpheus

DRM-fans will love it

They exist?


On topic, it looks interesting. But as you noted, 100 times the area press. So much for using any smaller buttons with this (like on Palms where you hit the small-ish buttons on the screen). And what are the real advantages over using a stylus? I can't think of any.

[ignatz]

Originally Posted by Chaos

And what are the real advantages over using a stylus? I can't think of any.

No stylus to lose? They also allow 2 simultaneous presses to be read at once, which could lead to some interesting applications.

The Jackito was first mentioned on Mobileread here and there a couple of good links. Back then (late July 04) they were targeting release by the end of the year, which plainly didn't happen, though they are not too far off. There's been a lot of hype around this device, and I'll be very curious to see how it lives up to it. For better or worse, I'm happy to see another OS out there for portables, along with a novel input schemes. If nothing else, it will move the entire class of devices forward another notch.

[Alexander Turcic]

Ignatz reported on this device summer last year. It definitely looks interesting, especially with the bistable screen. But the price, ugh! With the bistable screen the device costs way over $700.

[frogoff]

their best asset is their Thumb-Driven-Interface know how.
Microsoft (with the university of Maryland) is working on their own thumb-driven-Interface but they say that it's impossible to enter text...microsoft's ui is only a iPod like interface to scroll and click an appli. but not to enter text,calculate or play for example.
seems that jackito have an advance on that.
Samsung and Nokia are also working on fingertip touchscreen ui as they say.
Perhaps jackito is only a R&D team of microsoft testing an opportunities in the field of touch user interface (microsoft/University of maryland speak about Jackito and iPod in their references.