The debate about whether Sony Ericsson’s flagship Android handset, the Xperia X10, supports multi touch or not, has been on going pretty much since the day the handset was announced. We heard some say that the X10 was capable of multi touch and even some videos showing multi touch on the X10. Then the day came when Sony Ericsson themselves officially announced that the handset would not support multi touch. Despite that, there have been many questions arising and doubting the “confirmation”. The speculation that the handset may support multi touch rose again when the X10 was due to be released Stateside, as the Sony Style website had the handset pegged as having a four inch multi touch display. That little detail was however removed once the word spread throughout the internet.
The question of multi touch on the X10 has once again been raised in the past few weeks, as videos have surfaced which show the Xperia X10 responding to multi touch. While rather convincing, there was a possibility that they could have been faked. With the information that Sony Ericsson have given today through Rikard Skogberg at the Sony Ericsson blog though, it seems likely that the videos weren’t fake at all.
According to Skogberg, who put the question of multi touch on the X10 down to “no such plans”, has said that due to the overwhelming response from users wanting this feature, there have been many discussions and investigations and it turns out that, the Xperia X10 is capable of multi touch. The fact that it is possible to use multi touch on the X10 isn’t even the best part of the recent news. Skogberg has also said that the company aim to release an Over the Air (OTA) update, that will enable a form of multi touch.
It appears that the multi touch on the X10 will be limited to certain apps however. It is planned that multi touch will be supported in the web browser and Google Maps in the form of pinch and zoom. Third party app support however, will be limited, so it’s unlikely to be present in any intense multi touch games, however Angry Birds is one of the third party games that will support multi touch on the X10. Rikard has also provided a video showing the prototype software on his Xperia X10, which you can view below. Unfortunately there isn’t an estimated time on when the OTA update will be released.
