IT Support is being used by teams of IT engineers from different mobile manufacturers in order to find a way of turning IT products as "dumb phones" into touch sensitive input devices. TouchDevice is the Cambridge-based IT company that has been developing the software which uses the microphone to turn any surface on a handset into a touch-sensitive input panel. Mike Bradley, founder of TouchDevice, said that "What we're doing is using the existing microphone to detect sounds - the different areas of a phone have a unique sound signature. An algorithm matches the sound profile to the phone against a known template. For example, where icons are displayed on a non-touch screen display, you could tap on there and it would activate the application." The software is currently on a trial and if everything turns out fine, it could be presented at the Mobile World Conference in February next year.
