Sharp Shows Off Multi-Touch Optical Scanning Portable LCD

Today at CEATEC Sharp showed off its optical scanning LCD -- a 3.5-inch 320 x 480 portable display with an optical scanner integrated into each pixel, making the screen capable of scanning business cards and other visual information placed on its face. The pixel-integrated optical scanning technique is also able to be used to enabled more robust multi-touch interfaces; instead of a touch-sensitive film (like most touchscreen phones) or a capacitive display (like on the iPhone), these future Sharp displays literally constantly scan for finger touches, enabling multi-touch input with all five fingers simultaneously.

Pretty slick to allow the screen of a cellphone to also be a scanner. I think this would be good for being able to scan the barcodes of items while at a store to get additional information on the item such as environmental impact or comparison pricing.

via Engadget