14 DAY TRIAL // Older monitors and TVs have no touch support, but maybe you're just not up for an upgrade, especially if your display has a good resolution. That's why the Zmartframe might be one of the best inventions of recent months.
Zmartframe is an add-on that attaches to a monitor or all-in-one PC and adds support for touch-based input. It's that simple.
The only restrictions are that the display needs to have a diagonal of 19, 22 or 24 inches, and the 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen, pretty normal really).
A man named Anthony Ng and his team at Gowin Technology are the ones that came up with the thing. And they didn't just include touch support, but also PC-like hardware.
You see, a PC's monitor may not need much to recognize and use the Zmartframe, but if you want to add touch support to a TV, things get trickier.
Fortunately, the team thought of that and included Android PC-like hardware in the frame of the display attachment. 8 GB of internal storage and 1 GB of DDR RAM are driven by a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU with 1.2 GHz clock.
The device gets power via USB when in Windows mode but needs to be plugged in a wall socket in Android mode.
If you think that the Zmartframe would be a cool thing to see in stores, you can go to the Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign and pledge $130 / €96 to get one. Below you'll find a video demo of the new product, posted on YouTube by Tec Gowin.
There is no odd configuration associated with using the Zmartframe in Windows or Android mode. The chosen connector determines that. Plugging it in a USB port automatically activates Windows mode, while using an HDMI connection enables Android.
This is also why the Android mode needs you to plug the attachment separately into a wall socket: the HDMI interface cannot deliver power as the Universal Serial Bus can.
Do keep in mind, though, that installing the Zmartframe adds 17 mm of thickness to monitors, and that the touch response time isn't the best: 8 ms. Also, the accuracy is of 2 mm, which is decent but not perfectly on the same level as that of actual displays with built-in touch support.
Still, when you have the option of choosing between buying a Smart TV or monitors for several hundred dollars, or getting the Zmartframe for $130 / €96, it doesn't take a genius to figure out which will be chosen by people on a budget.
