Neonode
More info
- Released
- 2001
- Type
- Mobile phones, later touch technology
A Swedish company that sold a swipe-driven touchscreen phone three years before the iPhone, went bankrupt, and survived as a patent licensor.
The Neonode N1 arrived in 2004: a small phone with no keypad at all, operated by sweeping your thumb across the screen. The touch sensing wasn't capacitive but a grid of infrared beams along the edges that the finger interrupted. Sales were modest, and the Stockholm company went bankrupt in 2008.
The technology lived on as zForce and was licensed to e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle Touch and Kobo devices. The N1's swipe gestures also turned up as prior art in Apple's European patent fights over "slide to unlock" — belated recognition that sold exactly zero phones.