Iphone, multi touch or dual touch screen?

Multi-touch.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/

Philip,

I would suggest viewing the iPhone portion of the Keynote at MacWorld. It is introduced as a multi-touch display, and many other of its features are discussed.

It can be found online currently at this site:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/keynote

In addition the iPhone specifications page lists the display as multi-touch. The link for the specifications is here:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.

I'm curious as to why you ask, since as far as I know, there aren't any gestures that require more than dual touch.

What is it you need it to do that requires more?

What's the difference?

Multi-touch could just be marketing speak for dual-touch.

Hmmm, I see. Except I don't really! It makes little difference in a real sense if the screen can cope with 20 touches if the only gestures that the software understands are limited to two. Likewise, given that limitation, it's not really possible to actually test it in any practical way to find the answer. And even if there were a way, no way to use the answer you get to any benefit.

Of course in an academic sense it's an interesting question.

As to the OSX claim - it is OSX. Not Mac OSX? Well, it lacks a Finder and desktop and dock - the user interface components, and being a hand-held device it lacks much of the software that wouldn't be of much use on it anyway, but those things were pretty clear on immediate sight of it in the keynote presentation. What flavor of OSX is thusly not of much significance - it has an interface tailored to the things it needs to be able to run and the means by which it and the user communicate with each other. I'm not sure I see why that would be a problem!

If you are saying that there were things implied by Apple then I think that's very true. The only problem is that by the nature of implication, everyone gains what implication(s) occur to them as individuals, so what I may have inferred could be radically different from what you did. That's more a failing of us ourselves, for reading more into what was said than we should, not of Apple who made us believe something that isn't so.

Multi-touch will expand to include guestures above duel touch.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/08/02/appledeveloping_configurable_multi_touch_gesturedictionary.html

While that may be true, the article refers to a patent application describing the development of a multi-touch language, and refers not to the iPhone's display technology, nor any indication that the iPhone has presently got the capability to support the language described.

There has never been any doubt that multi-touch gestures COULD be more than dual touch, just whether, for example, the iPhone would be capable of accepting those gestures. So far, since they don't exist (that we know of, though those who want cut-n-paste will be gratified so see them included in the patent) we have no way to tell!

It woule be most reasonable to believe that the technology is software based and the screen has no inherent limitation in accepting multi-touch gestures.

I think people did read every bit into the osx thing though. The average user after hearing the words "it runs osx" were blown away, nobody was aware of any other form of osx, which is something Apple didn't inform us of. It's just bending the truth, massively. All they had to say it was a stripped down version of OSX, or a baby OSX. But branding it with the same title to generate more hype and ultamately more sales is a bit cheeky.

As I far I know, iPhone runs OSX, not a baby version of it.

There are some OSX interface features that are available on the Mac and suit its form factor, but are not available on the iPhone. On the other hand, there are some OSX interface features that are available on the iPhone that suit its form factor, but are not available on the Mac.

Someone could equally make the case that it is the Mac version of OSX that is the baby compared to what ships on the iPhone. But that would be equally wrong. They are both OSX, with different interface features optimized for their respective form factors.

Beyond that, I think it's reasonable to expect cross-pollination over time, and Apple has publicly hinted as much. But underneath the interface is OSX, not baby OSX.

I totally understand regarding would a multi-touch screen on something so small be even usable, and of course it wouldn't, you only need dual touch. It would just be nice to see Apple say this rather than multi, if indeed it is only dual. If it is multi touch, then great! but if not, then say so, put "dual touch"

Well, we don't know! There may be some future gestures that require three fingers and tap into the device's capability to accomodate that.

There may be limits to the hardware and software (and they may be different) regarding how many simultaneous touches the device can accomodate. It may be two or it may be two thousand. Or maybe there are no limits, and the device will spark an evolutionary increase in fingers...

However, your interest is semantic: why call it multitouch instead of dual touch? Aside from the obvious - that it may not be limited to two touches (we don't know) - multitouch not only sounds better than dual touch, but also substitutes for it. Interestingly enough, "multi" has multiple definitions, one of which is "more than one". "Multi" need not start at three, and even if iPhone were limited to two simultaneous touches, that can be legitimately described as "multitouch."

It woule be most reasonable to believe that the technology is software based and the screen has no inherent limitation in accepting multi-touch gestures.

I'd like to agree with that, but I can't because at this time we have no hard facts about the screen to base that belief upon.