If you find touchscreens difficult to use and love the feel of real buttons on your gadgets fear not as this could be the perfect invention for you. A new type of technology has been created by a Californian start-up called Tactus. They have created transparent buttons that pop up from your gadget on demand. They pop up and then quickly disappear and the best thing is that the sheet is no thicker than the glass/plastic cover than your smartphone normally has.

The company wants this technology to be used with phones, tablets, remote controls and even musical instruments. Tactus say: ‘What if buttons could morph out of the surface of your device? Tactus provides a new dimension to touchscreens by enabling real, physical buttons that rise up from the surface on demand, and then recede back into the screen, leaving a perfectly flat, transparent surface when gone.’

The science behind the technology is that modern touchscreens are built up with layers of material. Tactus has made sure their layers are thin enough to easily fit onto conventional screens ensuring that they are still touch sensitive. When the buttons are not active they sink back into the screen leaving your gadget looking slick and giving in a smooth finish to enable you to view the screen as you do now.

‘This is not a trick of your senses using vibration or stimulation, but rather real physical buttons that rise out of the surface’.