Want to see the glass behind the iPhone’s multi-touch panel? Well this ain’t it, it’s better. Sharp — one of Apple’s iPhone panel providers — Sharp Corporation has successfully developed a new System LCD equipped with touch screen and scanner functions. An optical sensor is built into each pixel of the LCD panel, eliminating the need to bond a film to the panel for touch screen functions, and providing beautiful images without losing display image quality. Sharp just unveiled their newest 3.5-inch, 320 x 480 pixel resolution multi-touch panel which does what its predecessor did in just half the thickness. The new 1-mm depth was achieved by integrating the optical sensor into each pixel while incorporating scanning functionality for fingerprint authentication or barcode and business card scanning. Right, with the appropriate underlying software of course. Sharp expects to adapt the new technology to multi-touch, glass panels as large as 12.1-inches. Sample LCDs will be made available in September before mass production beings in the Spring of 2008.

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