Can a traditional tablet screen be made to sense light?

[smartroad]

I was wondering if it was possible to use a tablet as a scanner.

Get the document you want to scan, lay it flat with good light, use tablets rear camera to take photo That's how I 'scan' documents in these days. Hardest part is not having shadows on it, but with matt paper the cameras flash is normally okay to use. Once I even used a bit of glass to hold it down - took a little bit to not have reflections but worked well

[TorTorden]

Why would the screen itself registering light be of any benefit?

I was wondering if it was possible to use a tablet as a scanner.

I was never truly certain but I think the never really in production first Microsoft surface had a screen capable of this. Granted it was basically a camera inside in each pixel and horrendously expensive .

By surface I don't mean the tablets but the big ass table.http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/20/micr ... ass-table/

Excellent link TT. I reckon we'll have them a few years down the line eh?

I highly doubt it.
That thing is like 10 years + by now.
It was never seen outsider demo's and tv shows, the latest being the hawaii 5.0 reboot I believe.

Ms even took the surface brand they had for it and started using it for their windows tablet lineup.
A sure sign of them completely abolishing the concept.

I'm still not sure but from they say the touch was actually cameras embedded in the display rather than what we have in phones and tablets now so it could scan documents and whatnot but I'm not sure that actually worked or was just classic Hollywood scripting.

But after a while I guess they figured nobody wanted an eighty pound 10 000$ (at the least) table computer.
Especially since you could have practically all the same functionality in an ipad, only it cost a fraction and you could fit it in a small backpack/purse.

[GlobusDiablo]

Cheers guys for the feedback. I guess it just seems like an obvious evolution to me.

Oh well. Fly safe all!