This flexible smartphone lets users feel the buzz by bending their apps

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ReFlex is a full-color, high-resolution flexible smartphone that combines multi-touch with bend input.

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Researchers at Queen’s University have developed the first flexible smartphone. ReFlex boasts a high-resolution, full-color display that combines multi-touch with bend input. Just as current software enables devices to respond to various combinations of finger movements, ReFlex and its apps react to different bend gestures instead.

“When this smartphone is bent down on the right, pages flip through the fingers from right to left, just like they would in a book,” explains Roel Vertegaal, a computer scientist and director of Queen’s Human Media Lab. “More extreme bends speed up the page flips. Users can feel the sensation of the page moving through their fingertips via a detailed vibration of the phone. This allows eyes-free navigation, making it easier for users to keep track of where they are in a document.”

The smartphone itself uses many components commonly found in today’s gadgets, including a high-definition 720p OLED touchscreen and an Android 4.4 KitKat board. However, the ReFlex gets its super powers from the researcher’s newly-developed bend sensors located behind the display.

“ReFlex also features a voice coil that allows the phone to simulate forces and friction through highly detailed vibrations of the display. Combined with the passive force feedback felt when bending the display, this allows for a highly realistic simulation of physical forces when interacting with virtual objects,” the team adds.

This technology will ultimately enhance the user experience, which is evident when playing a game like Angry Birds and employing a virtual slingshot.

“As the rubber band expands, users experience vibrations that simulate those of a real stretching rubber band. When released, the band snaps, sending a jolt through the phone and sending the bird flying across the screen,” Vertegaal notes.

Intrigued? While this new way of interacting with our mobile devices may still be a few years away, you can see it in action below and read all about it here.

[Images: Queen’s University Human Media Lab]

Atmel adds force sensing to capacitive touch

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Atmel’s new force sensing technology gives users more control through the pressure of their touch.

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During CES 2016, Atmel showcased its next-generation force sensing technology in the latest maXTouch U series for smartphones. This new technology boasts 3D interactions for more intuitive control. Meaning, it enables a user to preview, zoom, play game, text and much more, simply by applying pressure to the screen with the touch of a finger.

Atmel’s force sensing technology can detect how much pressure a user applies to the screen and respond accordingly. For instance, a user can apply variable force to the glass on the touchscreen to activate various commands with their finger: slight pressure can be applied to the screen to select a gaming app and more pressure can be applied to start the game.

This biometric band can unlock your touchscreen device

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Instead of passwords, what if your tablet authenticated you each time you touched the screen?

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Having to continually enter passwords isn’t so convenient, especially when you’re in a rush. With hopes of putting an end to login prompts, two researchers have developed an innovative way of authentication for pretty much any touchscreen device. The brainchild of Christian Holz and Marius Knaust (who you may recall from their earlier project Bodyprint), Bioamp is a smart strap that uses a biometric sensor and a low data rate transmitter to access and protect content on tablets.

“From each touch, the touchscreen senses the 2D input coordinates and at the same time obtains biometric features that identify the user. Our approach makes authentication during interaction transparent to the user, yet ensures secure interaction at all times,” the duo explains.

To test their concept on today’s gadgets, they first created a watch-like prototype. Bioamp is equipped with several electrodes that sense the impedance profile of a wearer’s wrist and then modulate a signal to the body through their skin. From there, the touchscreen obtains the biometric data, identifies the particular user, and continuously grants permission for each interaction.

As Hackaday notes, Bioamp’s electrodes couple a 50V 150kHz signal through a wearer’s finger to the touchscreen, which picks up both the finger’s location via capacitive sensing and the background signal that’s transmitted by the bracelet. This background signal is modulated on and off, relaying the biometric data.

“Since Bioamp senses contact with skin, it is sufficient to collect biometric values initially and then ensure that the same user is wearing the device during further use. When Bioamp detects that the user has taken off the band, it stops transmitting signals, waits for the band to be put on again, and repeats the biometric measurements for subsequent modulation,” the duo writes.

The researchers integrated their approach into a Surface 2 Pro running Windows 8.1 to demonstrate various use cases, which include payment for app store purchases, authentication for emails and notifications, as well as temporary access for sharing photos. Additionally, Bioamp supports logins that require more than one person to be present at a time. For example, two users would need to touch a single login tile simultaneously in order to unlock and open sensitive emails.

In terms of hardware, Bioamp is driven by a Blend Micro. This board features an ATmega32U4 MCU and an nRF8001 BLE chip, which handles the wireless data transmissions to the tablet to compensate for low touchscreen sampling rates. Meanwhile, power is supplied by a pair of 110mAh LiPo batteries.

While some may argue that there are limitations to the design, this idea of making touch interaction convenient and secure is pretty darn cool. You can see it in action below, and be sure to read all about it in their research paper here.

Secured SAMA5D4 for industrial, fitness or IoT display

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To target applications like home automation, surveillance camera, control panels for security, or industrial and residential gateways, high DMIPS computing is not enough.

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The new SAMA5D4 expands the Atmel | SMART Cortex-A5-based family, adding a 720p resolution hardware video decoder to target Human Machine Interface (HMI), control panel and IoT applications when high performance display capability is required. Cortex-A5 offers raw performance of 945 DMIPS (@ 600 MHz) completed by ARM NEON 128-bit SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) DSP architecture extension. To target applications like home automation, surveillance camera, control panels for security, or industrial and residential gateways, high DMIPS computing is not enough. In order to really make a difference, on top of the hardware’s dedicated video decoder (H264, VP8, MPEG4), you need the most complete set of security features.

Whether for home automation purpose or industrial HMI, you want your system to be safeguarded from hackers, and protect your investment against counterfeiting. You have the option to select 16-b DDR2 interface, or 32-b if you need better performance, but security is no longer just an option. Designing with Atmel | SMART SAMA5D4 will guarantee secure boot, including ARM Trust Zone, encrypted DDR bus, tamper detection pins and secure data storage. This MPU also integrates hardware encryption engines supporting AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)/3DES (Triple Data Encryption Standard), RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman), ECC (Elliptic Curves Cryptography), as well as SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) and TRNG (True Random Number Generator).

If you design fitness equipment, such as treadmills and exercise machines, you may be more sensitive to connectivity and user interface functions than to security elements — even if it’s important to feel safe in respect with counterfeiting. Connectivity includes gigabit and 10/100 Ethernet and up to two High-Speed USB ports (configurable as two hosts or one host and one device port) and one High Speed Inter-Chip Interface (HSIC) port, several SDIO/SD/MMC, dual CAN, etc. Because the SAMA5D4 is intended to support industrial, consumer or IoT applications requiring efficient display capabilities, it integrates LCD controllers with a graphics accelerator, resistive touchscreen controller, camera interface and the aforementioned 720p 30fps video decoder.

The MCU market is highly competitive, especially when you consider that most of the products are developed around the same ARM-based family of cores (from the Cortex-M to Cortex-A5 series). Performance is an important differentiation factor, and the SAMA5D4 is the highest performing MPUs in the Atmel ARM Cortex-A5 based MPU family, offering up to 945 DMIPS (@ 600 MHz) completed by DSP extension ARM NEON 128-bit SIMD (single instruction, multiple data). Using safety and security on top of performance to augment differentiation is certainly an efficient architecture choice. As you can see in the block diagram below, the part features the ARM TrustZone system-wide approach to security, completed by advanced security features to protect the application software from counterfeiting, like encrypted DDR bus, tamper detection pins and secure data storage. But that’s not enough. Fortunately, this microprocessor integrates hardware encryption engines supporting AES/3DES, RSA, ECC, as well as SHA and TRNG.

The SAMA5 series targets industrial or fitness applications where safety is a key differentiating factor. If security helps protecting the software asset and makes the system robust against hacking, safety directly protects the user. The user can be the woman on the treadmill, or the various machines connected to the display that SAMA5 MCU pilots. This series is equipped with functions that ease the implementation of safety standards like IEC61508, including a main crystal oscillator clock with failure detector, POR (power-on reset), independent watchdog timers, write protection register, etc.

The SAMA5D4 is a medium-heavier processor and well suited for IoT, control panels, HMI, and the like, differentiating from other Atmel MCUs by the means of performance and security (not to mention, safety). The ARM Cortex-A5 based device delivers up to 945 DMIPS when running at 600 MHz, completed by DSP architecture extension ARM NEON 128-bit SIMD. The most important factor that sets the SAMA5D4 apart from the rest is probably its implemented security capabilities. These will protect OEM software investments from counterfeiting, user privacy against hacking, and its safety features make the SAMA5D4 ideal for industrial, fitness or IoT applications.

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Eric Esteve is a principle blogger as well as one of the four founding members of the site. This blog first appeared on SemiWiki on October 6, 2015.

Your touchscreen can now seamlessly transition between hover, finger and glove touch

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The new maXTouch mXT641T family is the industry’s first auto-qualified self- and mutual-capacitance controller meeting the AEC-Q100 standards for high reliability in harsh environments.

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Optimized for capacitive touchpads and touchscreens from five to 10 inches, Atmel has expanded its robust portfolio of automotive-qualified maXTouch controllers with the all-new mXT641T family. These devices are the industry’s first auto-qualified self- and mutual-capacitance controllers meeting the AEC-Q100 standards for high reliability in harsh environments.

The maXTouch mXT641T family incorporates Atmel’s Adaptive Sensing technology to enable dynamic touch classification, a feature that automatically and intelligently switches between self- and mutual-capacitance sensing to provide users a seamless transition between a finger touch, hover or glove touch. As a result, this eliminates the need for users to manually enable ‘glove mode’ in the operating system to differentiate between hover and glove modes. Adaptive Sensing is also resistant to water and moisture and ensures superior touch performance even in these harsh conditions.

The latest family of devices support stringent automotive requirements including hover and glove support in moist and cold environments, thick lens for better impact resistance, and single-layer shieldless sensor designs in automotive center consoles, navigation systems, radio interfaces and rear-seat entertainment systems. The single-layer shieldless sensor design eliminates additional screen layers, delivering better light transparency resulting in lower power consumption along with an overall lower system cost for the manufacturer.

“More consumers are demanding high-performance touchscreens in their vehicles with capacitive touch technology,” said Rob Valiton, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Automotive, Memory and Secure Products Business Units. “Atmel is continuing to drive more innovative, next-generation touch technologies to the automotive market and our new family of automotive-qualified maXTouch T controllers is further testament to our leadership in this space. Atmel is the only automotive-qualified touch supplier with over two decades of experience in designing, developing, and manufacturing semiconductor solutions that meet the stringent quality and reliability standards for our automotive customers.”

Interested? Production quantities of the mXT641T are now available. Meanwhile, you can learn all about the entire maXTouch lineup here.

How to prevent execution surprises for Cortex-M7 MCU

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We know the heavy weight linked with software development, in the 60% to 70% of the overall project cost.

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The ARM Cortex-A series processor core (A57, A53) is well known in the high performance market segments, like application processing for smartphone, set-top-box and networking. If you look at the electronic market, you realize that multiple applications are cost sensitive and don’t need such high performance processor core. We may call it the embedded market, even if this definition is vague. The ARM Cortex-M family has been developed to address these numerous market segments, starting with the Cortex-M0 for lowest cost, the Cortex-M3 for best power/performance balance, and the Cortex-M4 for applications requiring digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities.

For the audio, voice control, object recognition, and complex sensor fusion of automotive and higher-end Internet of Things sensing, where complex algorithms for audio and video are needed for rich audio and visual capabilities, Cortex-M7 is required. ARM offers the processor core as well as the Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM) architecture, but ARM licensees like Atmel have to implement memories in such a way that the user can take full benefit from the M7 core to meet system performance and latency goals.

The TCM interface provides a single 64-bit instruction port and two 32-bit data ports.

In a 65nm embedded Flash process device, the Cortex-M7 can achieve a 1500 CoreMark score while running at 300 MHz, offering top class DSP performance: double-precision floating-point unit and a double-issue instruction pipeline. But algorithms like FIR, FFT or Biquad need to run as deterministically as possible for real-time response or seamless audio and video performance. How do you best select and implement the memories needed to support such performance? If you choose Flash, this will require caching (as Flash is too slow) leading to cache miss risk. Whereas SRAM technology is a better choice since it can be easily embedded on-chip and permits random access at the speed of processor.

Peripheral data buffers implemented in general-purpose system SRAM are typically loaded by DMA transfers from system peripherals. The ability to load from a number of possible sources, however, raises the possibility of unnecessary delays and conflicts by multiple DMAs trying to access the memory at the same time. In a typical example, we might have three different entities vying for DMA access to the SRAM: the processor (64-bit access, requesting 128 bits for this example) and two separate peripheral DMA requests (DMA0 and DMA1, 32-bit access each). Atmel has get round this issue by organizing the SRAM into several banks as described in this picture:

By organizing the SRAM into banks, multiple DMA bursts can occur simultaneously with minimal latency.

For a chip maker designing microcontrollers, licensing ARM Cortex-M processor core provides numerous advantages. The very first is the ubiquity of the ARM core architecture, being adopted in multiple market segments to support variety of applications. If this chip maker wants to design-in a new customer, the probability that such OEM has already used ARM-based MCU is very high, and it’s very important for this OEM to be able to reuse existing code (we know the heavy weight linked with software development, in the 60% to 70% of the overall project cost). But this ubiquity generates a challenge: how do you differentiate from the competition when competitors can license exactly the same processor core?

Selecting a more aggressive technology node and providing better performance at lower cost are an option, but we understand that this advantage can disappear as soon as the competition also move to this node. Integrating larger amount of Flash is another option, which is very efficient if the product is designed on a technology that enables it to keep the pricing low enough.

If the chip maker has designed on an aggressive technology node for higher performance and offers a larger amount of Flash than the competition, it may be enough differentiation. Completing with the design of a smarter memory architecture unencumbered by cache misses, interrupts, context swaps, and other execution surprises that work against deterministic timing allow bringing strong differentiation.

If you want to more completely understand how Atmel has designed this SMART memory architecture for the Cortex-M7, I encourage you to read this white paper from Jacko Wilbrink and Lionel Perdigon entitled “Run Blazingly Fast Algorithms with Cortex-M7 Tightly Coupled Memories.” (You will have to register.) This paper describes MCUs integrating SRAM organized into four banks that can be used as general SRAM and for TCM, showing one example of a Cortex-M7 MCU being implemented in the Atmel | SMART SAM S70, SAM E70 and SAM V70/V71 families.

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Eric Esteve is a principle blogger, as well as one of the four founding members of the site. This blog was originally shared on August 6, 2015.

The Sensel Morph is a next-gen, multi-touch input device

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This pressure-sensitive, multi-touch input device will enable users to interact with the digital world like never before.

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Despite all the advancements in technology, the keyboard and mouse have collectively withstood the test of time, remaining relatively unchanged for decades — until now. That’s because Mountain View, California startup Sensel is hoping to usher in a new generation of multi-touch interaction with an input device that they call the Morph.

Powered by the company’s patented Pressure Grid technology, the Morph will let users interact with computers and programs in a whole new way. While on the surface it may appear to look like an ordinary trackpad, it is far from that. Inside lies approximately 20,000 sensors (or “sensels”) that can detect and measure the force of even the slightest touch. And given that it’s not a capacitive touch device, it doesn’t require a human to press on its outer force-sensing material. Instead, any object ranging from a paintbrush to a drumstick will do the trick.

“Unlike other touch technologies, which can only sense conductive objects, each of the sensor elements in our device senses pressure with a high dynamic range. These sensors allow us to capture a high-resolution image of the pressure applied to the device. Highly tuned algorithms on the device take these pressure images and turn them into a list of touch locations, each with their own force and shape information,” its creators write.

What’s nice is that the Morph works right out of the box with an assortment of applications, and is even hackable for the tech-savvy bunch. Simply connect it to your computer via USB, to your iPad over Bluetooth, or to your Atmel powered Arduino with developer cables, and you’re good to go.

As its name would imply, the unit can literally “morph” depending upon your activities throughout the day. This is achieved with the help of magnetic, fully customizable overlays (each shipment will come with three) that are placed over the gadget and instantly provide a visual “map” for each mode’s unique functionality. Backers can choose from a QWERTY keyboard, a music production controller, a piano, a drum pad, a game console, an art overlay, as well as one more to be decided by the Kickstarter community.

What’s more, Sensel has introduced an “innovator’s” overlay, which gives the Maker crowd the ability to design, print and use their own custom interfaces. And as if that wasn’t enough, you can actually combine multiple devices to amplify the awesomeness. For example, you can put four Morphs together to make an instrument with 96 keys.

“Imagine having your art tablet, music production controller, QWERTY keyboard, piano, video game controller (and anything else your mind can fathom) all in one device. If you can imagine something so limitless without your brain imploding, you’ve imagined the Sensel Morph,” the team explains.

With the Morph, you will also be able to create new, custom interfaces. The Sensel crew is developing a web-based drag-and-drop interface that will go live when the first batch of devices ship. With this interface, you will be able to devise your own overlay without having to do any coding. As for the developers out there, Sensel’s open source API will enable you to integrate the propietary technology into your own applications. The Morph is compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Arduino.

“Our mission from the start was to address the mismatch between the expressive capabilities of our hands and the restrictive interfaces of today’s devices,” the folks at Sensel add. “We want to enable new ways of interaction with digital devices and allow Morph users to unleash new possibilities in the worlds of music, art, gaming (cue Buzz Lightyear), and beyond!”

Housed inside the iPad-sized device’s aluminum casing and beneath its super thin, force-sensing material lies a patented electrical drive scheme and circuitry, which includes a microprocessor, an accelerometer, LEDs, Bluetooth LE support, a rechargeable battery and a microUSB port.

Ready to interact with your digital world like never before? Head over to the Morph’s Kickstarter campaign, where Sensel is currently seeking $60,000. Delivery is slated for next summer.

NailO turns your thumb into a mini wireless trackpad

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This wearable input device from MIT’s Media Lab is in the form of a commercialized nail art sticker.

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You’ve been there before: Your arms are full and the phone rings. You put everything down only to find out that it was a telemarketer. Or, while in the middle of preparing dinner, you need to scroll down the recipe page on your tablet. With your hands a mess, you first have to wipe them off before proceeding with the instructions. Fortunately, situations like these may be a thing of the past thanks to a new project from MIT Media Lab. Led by Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, a team of researchers have developed a new wearable device, called NailO, that turns a users thumbnail into a miniature wireless trackpad.

Resembling one of those stick-on nail accessories, NailO works as a shrunken-down trackpad that connects to a mobile device. This enables a wearer to perform various functions on a paired phone or PC through different gestures. And for the fashion-conscious, its creators envision a future with detachable decorative top membranes that are completely customizable to better coordinate with a wearer’s individual style.

Along with its use in hands-full activities like cooking or doing repairs, another potential application for the quarter-sized trackpad includes discreetly sending a quick text message in settings where whipping out a smartphone would be rude. After all, running a finger over a thumbnail is a natural occurrence, so a majority of folks would hardly notice this as a deliberate action to control a gadget.

“Fingernails are an easily accessible location, so they have great potential to serve as an additional input surface for mobile and wearable devices.”

Crammed within the small package of the NailO lie a LiPo battery, a matrix of sensing electrodes, a Bluetooth Low Energy module, a capacitive-sensing controller, and an ATmega328 MCU. With an average power consumption of 4.86 mA, the device can wirelessly transmit data for at least two hours — an ample amount of time for those in a meeting, in class, in a movie theater, or while working around the house.

In order to get started, wearers must first power it up by maintaining finger contact with it for two or three seconds. From there, users can move their index finger up-and-down or left-and-right across its surface, guiding the mouse on its synced device. To select something onscreen, simply press down a finger as if it were a mouse or a touchscreen.

“As the site for a wearable input device, however, the thumbnail has other advantages: It’s a hard surface with no nerve endings, so a device affixed to it wouldn’t impair movement or cause discomfort. And it’s easily accessed by the other fingers — even when the user is holding something in his or her hand,” the team writes.

For their initial prototype, the researchers built their sensors by printing copper electrodes on sheets of flexible polyester, which allowed them to experiment with a range of different electrode layouts. But in future experiments, the team notes that they will be using off-the-shelf sheets of electrodes like those found in some trackpads.

The Media Lab crew has also been in discussion with many Shenzhen-based battery manufacturers and have identified a technology that they think could yield a battery that fits in the space of a thumbnail — yet is only 0.5mm thick. In order to further develop the size of a nail art sticker, the Media Lab worked with flexible PCB factories for a slimmer and bendable prototype, which could conform to the curvature of a fingernail.

We’ll have to go out on a limb and say it: looks like this project ’nailed’ it! Want to learn more? Head over to the project’s official page here, as well as read MIT Technology Review’s latest piece on finger-mounted input devices.

ZTE’s bezel-less Nubia Z9 smartphone is powered by Atmel maXTouch

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With virtual edge keys and gestures — and no borders — the Nubia Z9 delivers key functions including wake-up, screenshots, flicking, volume and much more. 

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Last month, the newly-revealed ZTE Nubia Z9 lived up to its hype in China by selling out in a matter of 10 minutes. Now, the device is looking to make a similar splash here in the United States. With a super-sleek, practically bezel-less profile, it certainly stands out from other high-end smartphones on the market today with an assortment of impressive features, ranging from unique touch controls integrated into its side to a sleek metallic design.

Currently limited to China, the high-end handset is available in two colors, black and gold, and in three models, each with different memory capacities and built-in storage configurations. The base variant, the Classic, comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage, while the Elite and Exclusive both pack 4GB RAM and 64GB storage.

The dual-SIM smartphones are powered by a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, with a 16-megapixel rear  camera and 8-megapixel front-facing selfie shooter. The Nubia Z9 includes a 5.2-inch 1080p display, driven by an Atmel maXTouch mXT336T touchscreen controller, along with software that enables users to take advantage o its edge-to-edge design. Beyond that, the device boasts a 2,900mAh battery, Android 5.0 Lollipop, as well as 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, Wi-Fi, GPS and USB.

What truly makes this flagship gadget stand out is its bezel-free design — just 0.8mm thick — giving the illusion of a borderless display, all made possible by Atmel’s unique, proprietary single-layer pattern. mXT336T delivers these features, along with advanced algorithms and Atmel’s adaptive sensing technology to enable virtual edge keys and sliders—delivering interaction all the way to the edge of the phone.

“We selected Atmel’s innovative single-layer on-cell maXTouch solution to enable our first borderless smartphone design,” explained Ni Fei, CEO of the Nubia brand. “Atmel’s adaptive sensing and edge-sensing technology enable the innovative edge keys and gestures in our flagship nubia handset. We are thrilled to team with Atmel and look forward to delivering more unique smart phones with excellent touch performance using maXTouch solutions.”

And of course, one can’t forget the company’s Frame Interactive Technology, or FIT, which allows users to carry out various preprogrammed actions with gestures made along the beveled sides — whether that’s launching the camera, taking a screenshot or adjusting the volume.

Given the reception to the Nubia Z9 in China, this family of gadgets will surely make for an attractive option in America as well. Those wishing to get their hands on one will have to wait for its release that is slated for sometime in Q3 of this year. The Classic edition will go for approximately $565, the Elite for $645, and $725 for the Exclusive, which also includes an integrated fingerprint sensor.

ASUS Z300 tablet is the world’s first on-cell touchscreen with active stylus pen support

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The ASUS Z300 on-cell tablet provides a perfect ‘pen-to-paper’ writing experience thanks to Atmel maXTouch and maXStylus controllers.

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ASUS has revealed quite a few announcements over the last couple of days at Computex 2015 including an all-in-one PC, a full-featured smartphone for selfies, a second generation ZenWatch, as well as a range of tablets in various sizes. Among those devices was the 10.1″ Z300, which features the world’s first on-cell touchscreen with capacitive active stylus pen support that enables a precise ‘pen-to-paper’ writing experience for more content generation on today’s digital world.

To accomplish this, the company has selected Atmel’s maXTouch controllers to power the touchscreen and active stylus pen of its newly-launched tablet. The ASUS Z300 tablet’s touch display is driven by a maXTouch T-series touchscreen controller, which features a revolutionary sensing architecture that combines both mutual and self-capacitance to enhance performance.

“As a leading provider of innovative mobile devices for the worldwide market, ASUS continues to bring superior products to market,” explained Shar Narasimhan, Atmel Senior Product Manager of Touch Marketing. “The selection of Atmel’s maXTouch controllers for the industry’s first 10.1″ on-cell tablet with capacitive active stylus by ASUS is further testament that we are enabling OEMs to deliver leading-edge digital lifestyle products.”

What’s more, the device uses one of the industry’s most advanced capacitive styli, Atmel’s maXStylus mXTS220 — the only active pen with noise immunity capable of operating in the high display noise environment emitted by ultra-thin on-cell stack-ups. Together, the maXStylus and maXTouch integrate seamlessly to create a flawless user experience in even the most demanding conditions.

“As a leading manufacturer of mobile devices, our products are only built with world-class components,” added Samson Hu, Atmel’s Corporate Vice President & GM of Mobile Product Business Unit. “Atmel’s industry-leading stylus capabilities enabled us to deliver a much thinner on-cell display stack for more elegant designs with a best-in-class active pen experience. We look forward to launching more advanced devices with intuitive human interfaces powered by Atmel.”