Rain Water Touch Display Gets Oppo’s OnePlus Ace 2 Pro Much Love

I didn’t think much of this story when it first came out a few days ago, but it seems to have picked up some traction on the web, which is an interesting indication of what people are actually interested in when it comes to display features and technology. Shows how much I know. Just to put this in context, the phone in question retails for under $500 in China.

The main point seems to be that OnePlus is showcasing a feature called Rain Water Touch on its upcoming Ace 2 Pro smartphone in a video on its channel on Weibo. In the video, a comparison test was conducted between the OnePlus Ace 2 Pro and a competitor (presumably Apple). Firstly, both phones’ screens are covered in water droplets. The OnePlus Ace 2 Pro user can easily input a password to unlock the phone, but the competitor’s phone requires multiple attempts to successfully unlock because of the water on the display surface. Next, the phones are shown experiencing a simulate light rainfall. The OnePlus Ace 2 Pro is able to answer a call successfully, while the competitor’s phone has issues. When the phones are subjected to a misty spray of water, the OnePlus Ace 2 Pro allows the user to swipe easily and perform a zoom operations, whereas the competitor’s phone is less than smooth. You get the gist of it.

Apparently, OnePlus has a dedicated chip for this new screen, to accurately identify the screen’s state and some nifty algorithms to adjust for the moisture on the screen, and read the user’s touch correctly. There may be something lost in the translation but the the algorithms are said to be airspace convolution filtering, self-capacitance, and single-connected domain single-finger touch. Essentially, the phone has a compensation mechanism for touch feedback in the presence of moisture and uses a custom chip to calculate the adjustments quickly using proprietary filters to account for the change in touch sensitivity and finger movement.

And, whatever the actual results may be, the mere possibility of Rain Water Touch has hit a nerve with online phone enthusiasts who seem to be very on board with the feature as being extremely valuable. From GSM Arena, which was one of the first sites to reference the video to Techcrunch. Oppo seems to have found something that, on the surface, may not have seemed that important, but is proving to be a PR goldmine.