Boréas NexusTouch Lets UI/UX Designers Transform Smartphone Edges for Mobile Gaming, DSLR Camera-like Effects

Boréas NexusTouch Lets UI/UX Designers Transform Smartphone Edges for Mobile Gaming, DSLR Camera-like Effects

New haptic/force-sensing platform enables customizable, interactive touch zones on Android smartphones

BROMONT, Québec — January 5, 2022 — Boréas Technologies today introduced NexusTouch™, an integrated piezo haptic, gesture-detection and force-sensing platform that lets user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) designers create realistic, satisfying, and more personalized touch experiences on previously inaccessible real estate—the edges of Android smartphones.

“NexusTouch turns the phone’s edges into customizable interactive zones, allowing UI/UX designers to craft context-sensitive haptic effects where a button might feel like a trigger in a mobile gaming environment, a heartbeat on a health-tracking app, or a click that’s as reassuring as the shutter click of a DSLR camera,” said Simon Chaput, founder & CEO, Boréas Technologies. “NexusTouch also delivers a new level of gesture detection through force-sensing and advanced algorithms, allowing users to swipe, tap or fling on the side of the device to activate a particular function. And because it uses piezo haptics—a newer high-performing technology—it only vibrates the area under the user’s finger to enhance the touch experience, unlike legacy technologies that vibrate the entire phone.”

Evolution of Touch Technology

UI/UX designers have long faced constraints in advancing touch user interfaces in smartphones because the underlying technologies are so limited. While still the dominant touch technology, capacitive doesn’t support localized haptics or force-sensing, offering a rudimentary touch experience. Though it’s newer, ultrasonic technology provides gesture detection and force-sensing, but it doesn’t offer the localized feedback users also crave. NexusTouch, in contrast, supports localized haptic effects across the phone’s entire edges—as well as force-sensing—giving OEM and app designers a comprehensive human machine interface (HMI) solution for customizing user experiences by phone or by app.

“NexusTouch celebrates our emotional connection to our phones, empowering designers to create more personalized user experiences on the same piece of hardware,” said Chaput. “Game mode, for example, will feel different from camera mode, thus providing an accurate and immersive experience to the user who’s playing a favorite mobile game or trying to capture an important life moment on camera.” 

About NexusTouch

NexusTouch is a miniature hardware platform that leverages Boréas’ ultra-low-power piezoelectric semiconductor and software technology to enable a host of customizable touch experiences.

NexusTouch also features dynamic virtual button-mapping, allowing manufacturers to replace traditional mechanical power and volume buttons with area-specific system functionality and tactile effects.

Availability and Information

NexusTouch is already sampling to key customers. For more information on Boréas NexusTouch, visit www.boreas.ca/nexustouch or email: info@boreas.ca.

About Boréas Technologies

Named a top semiconductor company to watch in the EE Times Silicon 100, Boréas Technologies Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company commercializing product-differentiating piezo IC platforms in consumer and industrial markets. With origins in research conducted at Harvard University, Boréas was founded in 2016 in Bromont, Québec. Its proprietary CapDrive™ technology platform—on which the company’s ICs are based—is ideal for resource-constrained devices such as PC trackpads, smartwatches and fitness trackers, smartphones and gaming phones, game controllers, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The Boréas logo is a registered trademark, and CapDrive is a trademark, of Boréas Technologies Inc. All other product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Press Contacts

Marc-André Morin, Boréas Technologies

Email: mamorin[@]boreas.ca

 

Maria Vetrano, Vetrano Communications

Email: maria[at]vetrano.com

 

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