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I came across a new research touchscreen interface, developed by Microsoft Research's Patrick Baudisch, that he calls Shift. It lets a person use their finger for accurate selections as opposed to pulling out the stylus. The mechanism by which it accomplishes this is by popping up a zoomed copy of the screen area the finger covers, and finger rolls navigate a cursor to the desired target.
I'm a big fan of this. I'm not especially fond of styluses and the extra bulk they put into your average modern smartphone. Never mind the fact that an interface that currently requires the precision of a stylus effectively abandons one-handed use.
Unfortunately, it's just a research project, so there's no way of knowing when it will make it in to the enxt version of Windows Mobile, indeed if it ever does. The demo they link to is for Windows XP.
There's a link to a demonstrative video after the cut. [via]
