Tactus makes keyboards that appear out of seemingly flat glass touchscreen surfaces, thanks a fluid-based layer that reacts to electrical signals to create rises and bumps that serve as keys and buttons. It’s a magical technology, and one that you can see demoed on video in the clip below from CES this year. Soon, you’ll be able to get that tech on a range of devices thanks to a new… Read More
There were plenty of media darlings at last year’s CES, but few tickled people’s fancies the way that Tactus and its amazing disappearing tablet keyboard did. The company has spent the past few months crafting reference devices for would-be partners and gearing up to help OEMs bring that impressive keyboard tech to market, but now it’s looking to supercharge those efforts with a newly raised Series B round.
Sadly, the company is keeping most of the particulars under wraps for now — Tactus didn’t disclose the size of the round or the full list of new names that are joining existing investors like Thomvest Ventures. In fact, the only new investor Tactus specifically called out is Ryoyo Electro, a sizeable Japanese OEM (that I’ve honestly never heard of) that the company originally tapped as a strategic partner late last year.
And what exactly does Tactus plan to do with a freshly minted Series B? To expand on what it’s been doing for the past year or so — working with OEMs to fine-tune the Tactus experience ahead of some big initial launches. Naturally, part of that fine-tuning comes in the form of developing different sorts of keyboard layouts for OEMs to implement since the last thing a forward-thinking device manufacturer needs is a killer feature that competitors can pick up and run with themselves.
We’ve seen the traditional keyboard layout in action before: it involves pumping up areas of the screen that correspond to your usual set of alphanumeric keys, but more exotic configurations would see the gaps between keys to bulge instead to better guide users’ fingers where they need to go.
To hear Tactus CEO Craig Ciesla tell it, the first batch of devices with those expanding keyboards should hit store shelves toward the middle of this year, and with any luck that’ll just be the beginning. After all, the company has pointed out in the past that the process of crafting traditional glass cover lenses that sit over tablet and phone displays is tricky and costly enough to make a fluid-filled Tactus layer a viable choice. When asked if Tactus’ ultimate goal was to completely supplant traditional cover lenses, Ciesla cautiously confirmed his ambitions.
“It’s not going to be a case going from Q1 2014 where everything is glass to Q1 2015 where everything is Tactus,” he noted. “This is a better interface, it’s more satisfying, it’s lighter, it won’t shatter. It’ll just take time.”
Bold words, but we’ll soon see how right he is — Tactus has promised to show off some updated models when CES starts in earnest next week, so check back to see if these guys (and their partners) can make good on their lofty promises.
One of the most impressive things we happened upon at CES this year was the Tactus keyboard, a special fluid-filled layer that could be baked into a tablet or smartphone to provide users with a physical keyboard that could recede back into the screen when it wasn’t needed.
Since then the company has been flying under the radar, but it turns out Tactus has been hard at work on a prototype device with help from a prominent player in the touch interaction space. Tactus confirmed to TechCrunch that it has partnered with touch panel experts at Synaptics to create a reference device — a 7-inch Android-powered tablet — that it will begin shopping around to OEMs and carriers at the end of June.
As you might expect, the company was hesitant to name names, but newly-installed sales and marketing VP RK Parthasarathy noted that “multiple tier 1 OEMs” are already waiting for a chance to fiddle with the 7-inch reference design kit, and that the first Tactus devices were still slated to be shown off some time this year… just not around these parts. Instead, Parthasarathy expects the first official Tactus-enabled tablet to make an appearance at a trade show in Asia in Q4 (the tight-lipped VP wouldn’t confirm which) before popping up at CES in early 2013.
Fortunately, it seems as though those Tactus-enabled tablets may able to compete on price just as devices like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire do right now. Despite the seeming complexity of adding a fluid-filled outer layer to a tablet’s screen, it’s apparently a walk in the park compared to the alternative. According to Parthasarathy, the process of handling and cutting down glass for the traditional cover lenses that sit over tablet displays is cumbersome and pricey enough that implementing a Tactus layer is a viable financial alternative. The fact that the keyboard can be made to work with whatever OS sits below it is an intriguing proposition to boot — there’s nothing stopping Microsoft or Apple from running with these things short of a mismatch in vision.
The move works rather nicely for Synaptics too — the company’s touch layers have become ubiquitous in laptops and smartphones, but short of an appearance in Samsung’s 10-inch Galaxy Tab 2.0 Synaptics hasn’t had much success in cracking the tablet market.
“The tablet market has been evolving, and Synaptics has been criticized for being late to the game,” said Synaptics technology strategist Dr. Andrew Hsu. Granted, the tablet market is still relatively small compared to the handset business — while Synaptics’ presence in tablets has been modest, it hopes that partnering with Tactus can help them pick up steam in an already-crowded market.
It’s an incredibly neat concept and seems to work well enough in practice, but are people really clamoring for a return to more tactile way to interact with their devices? After all, big names in the mobile space like Samsung have been tinkering with ways to users to manipulate their gadgets without the need to lay a finger on them. In short, are touchier keyboards really the way forward? At least one person would probably agree, but as far as Tactus is concerned there’s nothing to stop an OEM from baking a whole host of interaction methods into a single device.
“What we’re seeing is a natural evolution,” Parthasarathy pointed out. “We don’t believe there is a single interaction mechanism that belongs on every device. Users will have a multitude of interface options, but serious content creation requires a physical interface.” We’ll soon see if the Tactus vision ultimately pans out — with any luck, that initial batch of Tactus tablets will go on sale a few months after appearing at CES.
The rumor about that more affordable iPhone just keeps coming back, but this time we’re finally seeing some sort of progress. Courtesy of case manufacturer Tactus, we’re apparently looking at the upcoming budget iPhone’s polycarbonate shell, which was spotted at a factory that provides parts to Foxconn. It’s the same story for the “iPad 5” case leak that Tactus published two days ago (the same day as our own scoop), so the company does seem to have a good contact for these kinds of goodies — and it is a very competitive market, after all.
Compared to the old polycarbonate iPhone 3G and 3GS, this mysterious shell appears to have a flat back instead of the old curved one, meaning it should reduce manufacturing complexity and therefore the cost as well. Another notable difference is that the old volume rocker is split into two, and then there’s also the LED flash that was absent on the old polycarbonate iPhones. Tactus adds that this body is slightly taller, wider and thicker than the iPhone 4 and 4S, but what we do struggle to believe is that apparently the same factory is producing this shell in black and white as well as blue, red and yellow. A decoy, perhaps? Only time will tell.
Microsoft’s decision to drop out of CES prompted a lot of questions with regards to the future relevance of CES, not the least of which was how much the industry really needed an in-person tech trade show in an age where business is primarily done online. Of course, there’s still a fair amount of value in offering members of the media and buyers the opportunity to actually interact with the technology in person. And while software companies have long been a staple of the show, their presence is most often an acknowledgement of hardware partners.
It’s fitting, then, that many of the show’s offbeat highlights came in the form of companies looking to offer hardware solutions to our increasingly virtual world. Parrot’s always-amusing CEO, Henri Seydoux said it best while showing off the latest additions to the company’s AR.Drone on our stage. “Today, the kids have video games,” he told us. “They’ve replaced toys, because it’s a much more interesting experience. With the drone, we’ve tried to make toys as fun as video games.” And it’s easy to see how such a product can be taken as a real-world answer to smartphone gaming, with video from the built-in camera being overlaid with AR content.
Selecting the best in show is no easy task, because CES covers such a crazy range of devices: refrigerators, tablets, smartphones and even technologically advanced cutlery. This year was no different. We’ve combed our CES 2013 coverage and narrowed it down to the biggest announcements that had us chattering at this year’s show. Join us after the break for CES 2013’s very best.
We had opportunity to catch Tactus at SID earlier this year, though with news that the Tactus keyboard was new and improved for CES we had no choice but to take a quick peek. What’s new? Well, Tactus has been sampling some new coating materials attempting to reduce glare — and succeeding — cut down on the controller’s size by 70% and in so doing also doubled up the speed that the keyboard activates. As a refresher, the system includes a reservoir stored in the device, a controller to move the fluid into the tixels — yes, tixels, Tactile Pixels — and software to control the entire system. Once activated, the tixels inflate and become squishy that offer tactile keyboard-like feedback. We like this, though it’s still early days, the system works surprisingly well. Application may eventually vary from gaming to accessibility with future offerings adding a complete matrix of independently addressable tixels. Take a peek at the gallery and video after the break.
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Tactus makes keyboards that appear out of seemingly flat glass touchscreen surfaces, thanks a fluid-based layer that reacts to electrical signals to create rises and bumps that serve as keys and buttons. It’s a magical technology, and one that you can see demoed on video in the clip below from CES this year. Soon, you’ll be able to get that tech on a range of devices thanks to a new… Read More
