The Palm Pre will use capacitive multitouch panels developed and manufactured by Cypress Semiconductor, if Taiwanese rumors are to be believed.  While Palm themselves declined to answer our questions regarding suppliers during the Pre launch briefing, Cypress are said to be the company’s sole supplier.  The TrueTouch panel itself is, according to Cypress’ demo video shown after the cut, capable of recognising up to ten distinct points of contact simultaneously, opening the door to complex gestures.

One such implementation in Cypress’ demonstration is tracking different routes in-between locations within a GPS application.  With one finger on the origin, and the thumb on the destination, a third finger can be used to touch different roads and highways to see real-time estimates of travel time.  It will also be able to recognize the usual pinch-and-spread, rotate and zooming gestures, as seen on current devices.

If the reports are true, Cypress’ clinching of the Pre deal with Palm will be a blow to Synaptics, who have become known for their capacitive and multitouch input panel technology, found in an increasing number of notebook trackpads and mobile devices.  Synaptics was initially tipped to be the provider of the iPhone and iPhone 3G’s capacitive display, but are not believed to supply Apple, either.  Incidentally, Cypress show the iPhone 3G twice in their demonstration video, as an example of capacitive implementations; it’s still unclear exactly which multitouch manufacturer Apple is working with.