March 13, 2012

How to differentiate touch screens?

Everyone is now familiar with touch screens. It is now widely used in all types of displays including mobile phones, tablets, laptops, computer monitors, ATM machines,etc. A touch screen can detect the presence and location of a touch in its display area.
Do you know there are many types of touch screen technologies? Yes, there are.
here I am discussing only about two types which are widely using than others. They are Capacitive touch screen and Resistive touch screen. Do you ever noticed that in some touch screen devices, your finger nail or a stylus can do the work but in some others they can't and your finger touch only works? That's the difference.

First let's discuss about Capacitive touch screen Technology. In this type, a human body touch only can make a 'touch' impact on it. The display screen consists of a insulator like glass and as the human body acts as an electrical conductor, the indium tin oxide coating in the display gets distorted by the touch of the human body. Thus it can detect the location of the touch and is processed accordingly.

In Resistive touch screen, the display consists of several layers with a thin space between them in it. When we touch using our finger tip, nail or stylus, the gap between them closes and thus it can detect the location of the touch.

That's the main difference between capacitive and resistive touch screens. The main advantage of capacitive touch screen devices over resistive is that it can detect multiple touch points. That's why you can zoom an image using your two fingers in such devices. Resistive touch screen devices lacks this feature as they can locate only one point at a time.

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