A Japanese tech company has unveiled a touchscreen prototype that actually lets users feel different surfaces.
Fujitsu, which is headquartered in Tokyo, showcased a tablet screen that simulates textures on Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Yahoo Tech reported.
The touchscreen gives the user the feel of different surfaces at the touch of a finger, something that is known as tactility.
"Turning the dial of a safe felt surprisingly convincing, ticking as I adjusted the numbers around the circle," Yahoo Tech's Brian Heater described.
"The DJ demo was pretty cool, too, mimicking the feel of a scratching record as I spun it around a turntable."
Some effects were more successful than others; the strings of an instrument and an alligator's skin weren't as convincing, Heater reported.
"Still, even when the demo didn't work exactly as intended, there was a thrill in feeling something that corresponded directly with an image on the tablet's display," he said.
Manufactures have been striving for years to bring tactility to phones and tablets; for example, a screen featured at last year's Consumer Electronics Show had small bubbles that expanded to mimic a physical keyboard and then receded back into the device, according to Yahoo Tech.
Fujitsu's technology, which could be implemented into production as soon as 2015, uses vibration to bring about different levels of friction between the user's fingers and the display.
In the future, a screen with tactility would be extremely useful for clothing retailers, who could then let one shoppers "touch" a shirt or a dress to feel the material. Avid gamers could benefit from the technology as well since a tactile screen could offer almost unlimited options for gameplay.
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