Touchpad as a touch screen? Could be Microsoft’s plans

You may be wondering what the point of using the touchpad as a touch screen? And I understand, of course, at first it may sound a bit strange, but the truth is that, according to reports WindowsUnited, Microsoft has recently registered a patent (you can see it here) aimed precisely at that, to be able use the touch mouse that the vast majority of notebook computers have, as an alternative to be able to interact with a device through a touch screen.

And I say that, at first, it doesn’t seem to make much sense because, Why use the touchpad as a touch screen If, in fact, the touchpad itself is already a pointing device that, in addition, is surely much more effective than the solution reflected by the patent? The answer is actually quite simpler than it may seem, and it has a lot, a lot to do with something we told you very recently. I am referring, and perhaps you have already guessed it, the evolution of the Your Phone app and, to be even more specific, its recent function to use Android apps from Windows.

This is better understood if we take into account the description of the patent: «Using an alternate input device as a maneuverable emulated touch screen device», something that we could translate as using a Alternative input medium as emulator for a touch screen device. That is to say, using the touchpad as a touch screen to, in this way, be able to reproduce in a more or less natural way the way in which we would handle a smartphone if we had it in our hands, and not to be viewing its content through the computer screen.

If we review the patent to use the touchpad as a touch screen, we can see that Microsoft’s proposal involves, when activating this function, make the pointer go to a working mode in which, instead of moving the pointer along and width of the laptop screen, emulate to be the touch screen of the device (or a part of it, depending on the size of the screen and touchpad) so that the user can control the device and its apps through Your Phone.

It does not make sense to think of other uses, such as using the touchpad as a touch screen to manage the computer itself. And the reason is very simple and, if you are using a laptop right now, you have it in front of your very eyes: look at the size of the screen and then that of the touchpad. The fact that the touchpad is much smaller makes this hypothetical use case not comfortable or practical at all, except for very specific cases, such as applications with very few elements and large sizes. And, of course, they are not the most common.