Raspberry Pi shows touchscreen and announces A+ sign

During an interview, the creator of the Raspberry Pi showed a touchscreen for the first time that will soon be sold as an accessory. It is a 7″ capacitive touchscreen with a VGA resolution. A Raspberry Pi A+ board is also on the way.

The touchscreen was shown by Raspberry Pi creator Eben Upton at a TechCrunch Disrupt conference in London. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is said to have received numerous requests for such an accessory to be released and, according to Upton, the display is expected to hit the market at the end of this year or early 2015. A price has not yet been announced.

The touch-sensitive screen, which uses capacitive technology, has a screen diagonal of 7″ and offers a VGA resolution. The touchscreen can be placed on top of a Raspberry Pi board, creating a fairly thick tablet, according to Upton.

In addition to the touchscreen, Upton also announced that an A+ variant of the minicomputer will soon be available. The current B and B+ models have proven to be much more popular than the cheaper A version: approximately one hundred thousand of the latter were sold against just under 4 million B versions. However, the Raspberry Pi boss did not want to say which updates the A+ will receive, but Upton promises to make an official announcement in the short term.