No matter how hard I tried, I could not convince myself that yesterday’s concept for the Redux Reverso would fly. Whatever we end up doing, we need a multi-touch screen on the front of the Redux Model 1, which means that we need a way to propagate user inputs back to the built-in hand-held, be it an iPhone or iPod Touch. With that in mind, I kept looking for a solution, and got a breakthrough earlier today while taking a shower. Watch out, this is getting pretty wild!

In order to find a way to get user inputs back to the hand-held, I spent a fair amount of time reviewing iFixit’s first look at the iPod Touch. What I learned there was that changing the iPod Touch’s video controller in order to increase resolution for video out is virtually impossible, for the video control board is connected to the main control board through soldered connectors. But I found something else that could save the day: the multi-touch screen is connected to the main control board through a standard connector, as can be seen on this picture. What this means is that we could use this connector to get user inputs from our larger multi-touch screen all the way back to the iPod Touch’s main control board, with no software modifications. Eureka!

So where would this take us? Well, we could use the iPod Touch’s docking port for getting a video out signal, connect it to a large multi-touch display located on the front side of our Mini Tablet, then connect this multi-touch display’s user input port back to the iPod Touch’s display connector located on its main control board. Of course, such a design means that we would have to sacrifice an iPhone or an iPod Touch for each and every Mini Tablet we would manufacture, instead of letting users bring their own, but this would allow us to deliver the form factor and user experience we have been looking for since the very beginning. This would also mean that we would be left with a spare multi-touch display that we would have no use for, which is a shame, for this is the most expensive component of the iPhone’s or iPod Touch’s bill of material.

Well, not so fast… Could we reuse this 3.5" multi-touch display in any creative way? Well, may be… And this is where this concept is getting totally wild. What if we used this multi-touch display as a visual multi-touch touchpad on our magnetic removable keyboard? Since the tablet would be used in landscape mode when connected to the removable keyboard, we could place the multi-touch screen in landscape mode as well, on the front of the keyboard, like most laptop keyboards do today. This awesome touchpad could then be used to click, scroll, and zoom. All we would have to do is multiplex the iPhone’s video output and user inputs, with output and inputs going to and coming from two multi-touch screens.

Now, this breakthrough also comes with a setback: we tried the iPod’s video out capability, and found that it can only display videos, not the iPod’s user interface. At this point, we must assume that the same will be true for the iPod Touch as well. This means that while we solved the user input issue, we do not (yet) have a way to display the iPod Touch’s user interface on a screen that would have a higher resolution than the one used for the iPhone and iPod Touch today (480 x 320).

Let’s hope that we’ll find a way to work around this issue. If not, we will have to consider more open alternatives, such as the OpenMoko platform. It does not support WiFi yet, but the GTA02 release does and is scheduled for December 2007, which would give us enough time to complete our own design around it.