Touchscreen to Enter Digital Cameras Segment.
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 by Giuseppe PiersantelliAfter MP3 players, tablet PCs, personal navigation devices and mobile phones, touchscreen technology is going to enhance digital cameras’ functionalities and interfaces.
Panasonic, which is confirming its role as one of the most innovative companies, has presented a couple Lumix models featuring a touchscreen display, an advanced Face Recognition system – a function that ‘remembers faces’ – and a continuous autofocus which can lock onto any subject and keep it in focus even if it moves.
According to the authoritative DPReview.com,
the DMC-FX550 incorporates a large 3.0-inch touch-screen interface to achieve amazing ease in both shooting and playing back the images. Effortlessly easy to navigate thanks to the responsive interface, the FX550’s touch screen is streets ahead of its competitors.
Cnet.com has recently published a synthetic comparison of the touchscreen cameras currently available on the market and produced from Sony, Nikon, Samsung and Panasonic. These cameras are sold for as low as about 300$, and the price will probably decrease.
Actually, 3-4 years ago many Sony and Canon digital camcorders were already equipped with touchscreen displays to access menu and functions, but now this technology is becoming more popular.
An increasing number of users and consumers is becoming familiar with touchscreen interaction and, as far as I know, when they start using touchscreen priducts, they hardly come back to button and switch interaction: this happened to mobile phone users when they started using Apple iPhone.
Digital cameras, with their techno-enthusiast audience, can effectively drive the spread of touchscreen interaction technology.
As a consequence, we can forecast that touchscreen interaction will be adopted by an increasing number of manufacturers on a wider range of products, from consumer electronics to computers and automotive. Besides being sexy and fashionable, touchscreen allows manufacturers to save money on the BOM (lower costs for mechanical switches) and increase the ATBF/ETBF of their products.
Tags: Digital cameras, touchscreen
May 6th, 2009 at 11:48 am
I believe that it’s the natural way of the evolution of interface man-machine, in a direction that machines are “learning” to communicate more similar to man (that uses using hands, voice, eye, smell, sounds, …) . Now we are adopting touch screen (laptops, cellphones, cameras, TVs, …), but soon we are going to see more evolutions like better voice recognition devices, and maybe some they we just need to think what we want and a machine will obey!
May 8th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
From my personal experience of touch screen with a Sony camera. Hardly to say I’m satisfied. But in the meanwhile, iPhone’s touch screen have another problem. 2 expectations for this kind of product. Moisture protection and break through interface design. Otherwise, it seems touch screen may just be a marketing slogan for future years.