Upgrade to at least dualtouch has been considered ?

When N900 was launched some of us complain about absence of multitouch gestures.
The researchs done (on half of 2010 or it was half of 2011) shown that dualtouch driver chip for resistive touchscreen was available, but unfortunately Nokia has started work on N900 much before (probably on 2008), when these chips were not yet commercially available.

But for a 2013's project at least a dual touch is a must.

what is so hard to understand in these words: "It will use original N900 touchscreen and display"?

Touchscreen for me is only the transparent layer over the LCD and that with a flat cable it connects to a hw driver that can be made from different producer (with of course different software driver).

So it is not so unrealistic the changing of these chips like they have changed IR chip, 3G modem chip, and so on.

Probably you when read something like "it uses original battery" think something like "there is the same nokia charging chip and so on"

Theoretically we could provide some form on dual touch in resistive 4-wire, but I wonder what it's worth when none of the Qt/Hildon/whatnot bits and none of the apps and none of the original N900 can support it. It's not like we introduce a completely new sensor here like e.g. compass that you could build apps on, touchscreen/pointer/HID is deeply entangled with X11 and hildon desktop and the whole gtk/Qt/other-toolkits. We will have a look into what can be done with minimal effort. We probably won't change the chip though. Maybe some hw hack (my hobby ;-D )

/j

Wouldn't least effort (software-wise) be replacing the touch screen with dual touch one (if its more or less the same price) and connect it with some hw hack (like you wrote) but in a way that it would treat the first touch in a same way as it does now and just ignore the second finger? It might require a crippled kernel driver at first (reporting only the first touch further to the software chain), but then hey - we would have multitouch high-accuracy resistive sensor which would not be used by Maemo at first, but could be used by other systemas... and some future post-release Maemo software patch/update (fully-featured kernel driver + x11 + gtk + hildon + qt) could EXTEND the current event system with additional events for second touch - so current apps would just ignore multitouch and react only to plain ol' single touch, but new apps could be written (new apps - yeah, I know ).

In fact, I don't need the multitouch and statements like "But for a 2013's project at least a dual touch is a must." even make me laugh and smell like an Android/iOS ad, but I do see a potential in it and wanted to point my idea out (probably it was born in few others' heads as well, it's quite simple).

If it is not so problematic I think it is better to change the chip with a dual touch version (if 4 wires touchscreen used on N900 is compatible) and then set it on singletouch mode.
I don't remember the name of that chip but it is present on 2010-2011 posts.

Nothing will initially change but we have a door opened for the future.
Instead a real dual touch with N900 original chip is not possible (otherwise we already have it on N900, with specific application, without waiting Neo900).

I.e. Kobo e-book readers have a infrared touchscreen which is dual-touch capable but Kobo uses it only on single touch mode (mode is changed at kernel level, and it is also possible to enable a parallel singletouch + dualtouch mode).
Probably because they not have a dual touch driver, driver for input events not for chip itself, for their linux image.
Sony has written the driver and with same hw has dual touch capabilities.

it's not exactly "simple", since a) proper dualtouch is not possible with 4-wire, you need 5-wire or 8-wire for that (you can botch 8-wire from 4-wire and 2/4 Rs) b) as you already noticed it would need driver patches we don't want to do and c) it needs a new driver to start with, then go on with patching that one. But in the end the killer argument is: "we don't have *any* choice for the digitizer/"screen" we have to use". This whole idea is ~5+ years old now - even way pre-N900. Nobody has implemented even a strictly sw-based POC yet. Why would we take risk to implement the HW to support sth beyond such missing POC?
Stay tuned, maybe you find an easteregg in Neo900, maybe not.
/j

ps: If we'd go for a touchpanel/digitizer change, I'd much prefer THIS one

Now, for the first time since I realized it is not joke, you've made me a little afraid about project future.

While it's certainly understandable from developers point of view - most people don't have a clue, how much money goes while designing such things, even if it's "only" about replacing components and adding/changing few of them, then building prototypes - but, won't raising a 10k-15k EUR *donations* (as you said, not counted as pre-order, or counted only in small part) become a real problem?

Generally, we can expect donating people to be roughly the same ~200 group of ones going to pre-order. Even, if we add another 200 of people interested in project but unable to buy in first batch (yet willing to donate few bucks for prototypes), it is, in 15k case, a 75 EUR per person. That without even considering, that people unable to order in first batch and donating "for love of idea" will probably give less.

So, it means that most financially-able people would need do donate ~100 EUR on "uncertain" stage of development, then pay ~700 EUR afterwards. While not impossible, isn't it too step price curve? Making pre-donated money to actually *count* toward pre-order later would help a lot, for sure (although, I get that you need those money as extra things, for actually making prototype).

Again, I don't think that it is *objectively* too much for such project. I'm just afraid that for most people, despite love for idea, it may end up being *subjectively* too pricey. Now, it makes me feel like a****le, but even myself, I'm not sure if I would be able to donate such sum in early stage, instead, ending up with "just" pre-ordering during MP pre-order campaign.

Now, despite as****e feeling, I think it's better to rise such concern, instead of hurray-optimism and empty money promises now, and lack of donation later. Of course, I really hope, that I'm wrong and Neo900 fan base is richer in average, making this 10k -15k EUR donation goal not-so-much of an effort. After all, canonical asked for 32M$ for their Ubuntu Edge phone...

Just thinking at loud, here.

/Estel

i myself ready do donate 100 EUR and then buy Neo900 for 700 EUR. yes, it's expensive, but for me this is the only way to get the thing I want and not another useless thing some Big Guys want to sell me.

besides, there will be a gap between donating and preordeing, so i can say to myself: this month i will spend 200 EUR on my dream. and 200 EUR next month. and so on. this is not as painful as spending 700 EUR at once, despite the same amount of money overall. %-)

just look what jolla did. We might do sth similar. Nothing decided yet. I didn't mean preorder only pays a fraction back, I meant preorder and down payment of a maybe 20% of the anticipated end price - of course those 20% will go off from the amount you have to pay when we finally ship. I think those who support the project in early phase definitely should get a better deal than those who join late. I dunno if we will ship t-shirts, prolly not. But we might etch your name into the PCB when you're one of the early supporters. Or you may get a login to some sort of "livecam to the lab" on top of your Neo900 for your early support. Or you can order a case with true gold plating, for an early 500 bucks extra. Everything possible.

We've not even started yet to ponder the options to offer. Don't worry, we are not mad. :-)

jOERG

PS: on a sidenode, the numbers and values I added the disclaimer for are now somewhat confirmed by Nikolaus. So what I pulled outa my rear end wasn't completely off :-)