Mobile phone users who have always longed for a touch-screen phone have reason to rejoice, for new software renders the entire casing and LCD display of a standard phone sensitive to touch - or, rather, the sounds of touch.

Called TouchDevice, the software can convert your regular, ordinary phone into a touch screen phone, on which you can scroll through menus, browse or zoom; all by swiping, tapping or scratching a fingertip along the side of the phone.

And it needs no new hardware, so can be applied to most existing phones, its creators claim.

Inventor Giovanni Bisutti of Input Dynamics of Cambridge, UK, said that they used the phone's built-in microphone. Every tap on the phone's screen or its casing produces a telltale sound that resonates through the device.

"The built-in mic picks up these 'acoustic fingerprints' and the TouchDevice software algorithms work out which spot on the phone was tapped or swiped," New Scientist quoted Bisutti as saying.

In future, he said, the algorithms will be able to handle taps from multiple fingertips at once, turning old phones into multi-touch devices.

"But I wonder how it will cope with people who bite their fingernails as that will change the acoustics," he said. (ANI)