

Ask HN: Will we ever see a touch device that supports hover? - artursapek

In my opinion, a screen that could "see" your finger hovering over it would help bridge the gap many see in the touch experience. What are the chances we'll ever see such a thing?
======
a_a_r_o_n
It's the wrong question, trying to fit an appropriate interaction from the
WIMP as an inappropriate interaction to WWCH (Whatever We Call Handheld).

The problem is you're looking at your finger like a mouse cursor, and a mouse
cursor is always touching the screen, if you will.

The equivalent result could be had easily, with no change or advance in
hardware, by introducing a trace mode (choose a better marketing term). Tap a
pattern, and a cursor appears on the screen. Now when you drag your finger on
the screen the cursor moves around. Other tap patterns can adjust the
granularity of cursor movement. If the cursor lingers over an area that has
some interaction associated with it, it can now also have a hover effect.

------
makecheck
It seems unlikely to me.

For one thing, even on a desktop system mouse-over detection requires CPU
usage and therefore power. Doing this continuously on a battery-operated
system seems like a big waste of power for little potential gain.

Also, even with software to judge whether or not a touch is "intentional" I
still accidentally touch things. Hovers seem to offer even more ways to be
input unintentionally.

~~~
skykooler
As far as I know, some BlackBerry phones do have this. The screen rests on a
physical button. A touch to the screen activates hover; a press (registered by
the button) activates a click.

~~~
randall
IMO it feels really unnatural. People who touch screens are used to touching
to activate, not touching to hover. I don't typically touch to hover, so
touching to hover feels like a totally unnecessary second step added every
time I want to interact with my device.

------
glimcat
It's been done repeatedly, e.g. by Wilson at ACM 2004. It just hasn't passed
the complex multidimensional optimization problem which is the process of
actually pushing such technologies to market.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.95....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.95.3647&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

------
dholowiski
I used to work for a company that manufactured touch devices. One line of our
devices did support hover (it's probably 5 years old now) but we disabled it
in software because it was too confusing of an end-user experience. This was a
camera based solution but I'm sure it's the same for capacitive screens.

From my actual experience, I don't think 'normal' users would 'get' hover.

------
lukeholder
See the verge's latest Microsoft tour or their interface labs. Kinects behind
lcds with full hover.

~~~
artursapek
Well that was cool. Their background music is horrible though

