There are times when our mobile devices reduce our face-to-face interaction with people. A new mobile interface called ‘Pinch’ could change that. It lets multiple mobile devices link their screens together to form a larger display.
Pinch is being developed by a research group at the Tokyo University of Technology. It gets its name from the fact that users make the pinch gesture on the screen of two mobile devices in order to link them. Currently the devices need to be linked via Wi-Fi. The connection allows them to determine each other’s position and adjust their display and content fairly quickly. Watch the video below for more on Pinch:
Based on the demo, Pinch will only work if all mobile devices are playing or running the same media or app. So I don’t think people will want to use Pinch to make a larger display with their mobile devices – you’ll have to have the same copy of the video on all devices to do that. But I can imagine apps that can take advantage of this, such as board game apps, racing games or file sharing apps. And a Captain Planet app.
