Hey, has anyone thought about trying out this method for getting a pseudo-multi-touch setup on the N900. I was playing one of the first person shooters on my N900 the other day (Duke or openarena, can't remember which one), and was using the proximity sensor to fire the weapons and thought... "Why can't this be used for pinch-n-zoom?"

So in normal pinch and zoom on capacitive screens in a browser/picture viewer, you initiate two separate points on the screen and expand out or contract in those two points to zoom out/in. It just requires the distance between two points on the screen the be determined as increasing or decreasing, right?

Trick with that is that the two points can move around, and don't need to stay in the same spot, which also allows you to do rotations with pictures. But for zooming, it's just the starting distance being known, and then a calculation of the change in distance between the two points to determine the zoom in/out factor.

So N900 doesn't have multi touch because it's resistive right? But it does have a stationary point on the front of the screen which is "known" The proximity sensor is a stationary point that can be enabled/disabled by just placing your finger over it. Why not use that is Point #1, and then when you place your finger on the screen, that's Point #2. Now if you drag Point #2 away from the proximity sensor location, you zoom in. If you drag your finger on the screen towards the proximity sensor, you zoom out.

Plus, you can pick up your finger on the screen, move it to a new spot, place back down on the screen, and continue dragging in/out to continue zooming.

You can even sort of rotate. Enable Point #1 by placing your thumb on the proximity sensor, and then press on the screen in the bottom left corner to enable Point #2. Now drag in an arc shape upward towards the middle-top of the screen and the N900 should recognize you're moving in a quarter arc and rotate your image.

Any thoughts on the idea of a pseudo-pinch-n-zoom using the proximity sensor as one of the points?

wow. sounds like a good idea. i hope someone finially gets to work on one of these ideas.

the 5800 got a few multitouch apps but not the n900

Nice idea, but you'd still need 2 hands to do so, right? Might look somewhat awkward when trying to zoom with 1 hand....

--edit--
I think i got you idea the wrong way. Now it sounds reasonable ;-)

eh, you might...but you're already holding the N900 with two hands, right? I usually do simply because it's a landscape oriented device mostly. But I suppose you could hold it from the back and try it. Probably works better if you did it with your left hand so you can use your thumb to do the onscreen part. Dunno, was just trying to spark ideas. I don't think I ever heard anyone suggest this one before. I'm really not sure how it would work honestly, but seems doable.

WOW. This is a perfect idea. I hope someone will make this become reality.

I have another idea based on yours. Did u play the game burgerface?
In that game the front camera is used to match ur face. So why not use the front camera to recognize the two fingers and zoom when the 2 fingers are manipulated

I at first got your idea the other way around:
Point 1 is (any right hand) finger on the screen and you zoom in and out by moving your (whole) left hand closer/ farther to/from the proximity sensor.

But your initial idea should even work in portrait mode with the device being held in the right hand. You can "balance" the phone on ring finger/ little finger, covering the sensor (then on the top right corner) with your right index finger and use your thumb to zoom.

--edit--
The longer I think about it the the better I like.

Yeah, but if the phone recognizes my fingers, it might get upset when I'm giving it the bird because it isn't doing what I want it to do...

haha.
Now c'mon fella. As if this would be the first device in the world forcing you to scrictly follow its very own rules to function properly or you'd be doomed else ;-)

I am not an expert and not the author of burgerface but doing two fingers might be harder than a face since the finger doesn't have as many distinguishing features as a face. Saying that you could track the face and the closer you bring the N900 to it the more it zooms.