The first of the "Google phones" is controlled using a method that is finally gaining momentum in mobile computing: swiping a finger across the screen.
The touch sensors in T-Mobile's G1 phone, which hits the US market on October 23, are made by Synaptics Inc., a little-known but influential Silicon Valley company co-founded in 1986 by a professor and a microprocessor engineer.
For the two decades since, Synaptics has championed the finger as a navigation tool for computers. It develops many of the sensors behind laptop touch pads, digital media players and high-end remote controls.
But touch screens were rarely seen in cell phones until Apple Inc.'s iPhone hit the market in June 2007.
The Apple device lets users scroll through pages of text or photos and type on an on-screen keyboard with one finger, or expand or shrink files with two fingers.
Analysts who have taken apart the iPhone say they don't believe that the Synaptics technology powers the innovative touch screen. Apple and Synaptics won't say. But the device's growing popularity helped Synaptics' mission of bringing touch screens to the mainstream.
Over the last six months, the company has launched four phones with its touch-screen technology. And another one is coming soon: The G1, which is made by HTC Corp. and runs Google Inc.'s Android operating system for mobile phones.
Putting touch technology on cell phones wasn't embraced at first. That has all changed, said Andrew Hsu, a product marketing manager at the company.
"Now we don't have to go to customers and say, `You want to do this,'" he said.
The number of cell phones with touch screens is expected to nearly triple by 2010, to 362 million from 120 million in 2007, according to research firm iSuppli Corp. In comparison, cell phones without touch screens are expected to increase by 6 per cent, to 1.12 billion from 1.05 billion.
Synaptics has hired 120 people since the beginning of 2008 to bring the total to 443, with new employees working on a variety of products, including mobile phones. Half of the employees have engineering backgrounds.
The company was co-founded by Carver Mead, a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, and Federico Faggin, a former Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corp. engineer who worked on the design of the first microprocessor.
Synaptics found its niche in the early 1990s when it supplied touch pads for laptops. In 2000, it sold touch technology for digital media players. As early as 2005, Synaptics put its touch technology in mobile phones. But it had trouble convincing cell phone manufacturers that a touch screen had benefits for customers.
"The idea that you could use your phone to do anything other than make phone calls was foreign," Hsu said.
In 2006, a year before the iPhone was unveiled, Synaptics demonstrated a concept phone called the Onyx, a remote-control-looking device navigated by the fingertip.
In January 2007, the LG Prada, with Synaptics technology, became the first touch-screen cell phone to reach the market, but it didn't catch on the way the iPhone did six months later.
In 2007, when Google encouraged companies to join the Open Handset Alliance to collectively develop a new cell phone software platform, Synaptics signed up. Hsu said cell phones with touch screens become more useful if the software takes advantage of the technology.
"The Google people understood the software side and worked on applications from the get-go, rather than bolt things on the last second," he said. The G1 and Android-powered phones from other manufacturers are aiming for the same smart-phone consumer market dominated by Research in Motion's BlackBerry phones and iPhone. Besides the touch screen, the G1 is also controlled by a track ball and a keyboard.
Its unclear how the new touch-screen cell phones will sell.
Loaded with features
By Claudine Beaumont/The Telegraph group
- The G1 phone runs Android, a system designed to bring the desktop computing experience to mobile devices, by allowing people to surf the internet and carry out everyday tasks on the move.
- The G1 gives one-touch access to Google online features, such as its email service Gmail, the video-sharing website YouTube, instant-messaging via Google Talk, and its maps service Google Maps. Users can instantly share photos taken on the three megapixel camera, and post them to the web. Google Maps includes Street View, which overlays roads with street-level photographs.
- The G1 is the first phone to have a compass built into it in addition to motion-sensing technology, so users can navigate using Google Maps by rotating the phone.
- The device has a 3.2-inch touchscreen, like Apple's popular iPhone, as well as a slide-out keyboard. It offers high-speed internet access via the 3G phone network and Wi-Fi.
- American users of the G1 will have one-click access to Amazon MP3, a music download service, expected to be launched elsewhere later in the year.
- The G1 comes with 2GB of memory, enough to store up to 500 songs. This can be expanded to 8GB using an additional memory card.
- The launch of the Google phone, made by the Taiwanese firm HTC, will pit Google in competition with the likes of Apple and RIM, which produces the BlackBerry mobile email device.
- Google, which already dominates the online advertising and search industries, is looking for ways to replicate its success on mobile devices.
- By putting its web browser at the heart of the Android system, it can deliver its content and applications to a target audience.
Larry Page, Google's co-founder, hailed the G1, saying it was as powerful as some of the desktop computers used a few years ago.
Analysts are sceptical whether the G1 can instantly dent the iPhone's market dominance, but say the platform has potential.
