Multi-Touch and the Android G1
The first thing people say when they see my G1 is, “Is that an iPhone?”
The second thing is “Well, does it have multi-touch?”
the first answer is a sturdy and confident “No,” but the to the latter, I respond “not yet.”
Officially, no. the HTC G1 is spec’d to be a single-touch device. That being said, the G1 uses a Synaptics touchs module that is capable of handling two-finger responses, and blogger RyeBrye has found some clues that may lead to possible activation of multi-touch. he says that after “uncommenting a bunch of lines in the synaptics touchscreen driver, and recompiling my kernel and replacing my boot.img - I was able to enable the debug logging of the touch input that tracks 2 fingers.”
The problem is, that while these findings mean that its totally possible, it would require a community built version of Android to be installed, with all the drivers and supports added manually. Plus, just because the screens on this wave of G1’s are built for multi-touch, doesn’t mean that the next wave will have the same screens.
So, yes, multi-touch can totally come to the G1, but more than likely will happen officially on a new phone, with a long-updated and bug-worked-out Android release. However, I’m in the hacker mind and still can’t wait to get whatever I can out of the G1.
