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With the dawn of the latest generation of smartphones, especially ones geared towards everyday people who might not need them, one thing is clear: touch screens are becoming almost a new industry standard.  Look at the iPhone, BlackBerry Storm, G1, LG Dare, and HTC Fuze among others.  Sure, some have keyboards as well, but aside from inputting text, users seem to love everything about touchscreens.

Immersion, the company behind the haptic screen on the Voyager, LG Dare, and Samsung Instinct is putting on quite the display at CES.  Possibly the coolest of these is the inclusion of Immersion’s haptic controls inside of a car.  Presumably it will mainly focus on in-car controls such as A/C, heat, stereo and whatnot, but it is certainly a welcome idea.

Immersion is also announcing its technology is being used in a new digital media player, which will be the first to include haptics according to the company.  The company will also announce that its technology will be ready for use by the Open Handset Alliance for implementation in the Android platform.

The difference between haptics and other touch screens such as those in the iPhone, is that haptic technology allows for tactile feedback.  The preference is mainly personal, some people prefer to actually feel like their pressing a button on the screen, and others don’t care so much as long as there’s visual feedback.  But, either way, haptic controls are a welcome addition to any device, and should be a good thing for Android and other systems that use them.