There’s a market for resistive touchscreens
Andrew Wirtanen / Consumer Products / Mobile
Do you have long fingernails? Do you live in a cold climate and often wear gloves? Well, device manufacturers may be ignoring you.
There are two popular types of touchscreens: capacitive and resistive. Capactive touchscreens (e.g. iPhone or iPod Touch) work when a conductive object (e.g. finger or stylus) touches the screen. Resistive touchscreens (e.g. Garmin or TomTom GPS unit) work when pressure is applied to the screen. Digitimes reported on February 12th that most Taiwanese touchscreen manufacturers are not going to manufacture resistive touchscreens anymore.
Personally, I prefer capacitive touchscreens and I think that the majority of people do too. It doesn’t get too cold in North Carolina, but I did need to buy some special gloves that work with my iPhone. However, there is a market for resistive touchscreens and we see it in our usability labs at HumanCentric all the time.
Device manufacturers should strive to explain both types of screens and give their customers an option instead of forcing them to conform.
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