There are several touchscreen technologies available in the market these days. Out of them 2 are very popular with mobile phones and PDA’s . “Resistive” and “Capacitive” touch screen.
Meaning
Commonly Terms
Capacitive Touchscreen
Is a glass surface coated with transparent conductors like indium tin oxide . As the human body is also a conductor, touching the screen with finger creates a electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. This location is then registered and action is made.
Most of the new touchscreen available in the market are now equipped with Capacitive touchscreen (pretty much all android and Apple phones). IPad,iPhone,iPod, Android Phones,Nokia N97 and All New touch screens with multi touch have touch screens which are capacitive or something more superior than that.
Resistive Touchscreen
Are comparatively lower in price than active touchscreens. They are built with two flexible sheet coated with a resistive material and separated by microdots or air gaps. when pressed the sheets come in contact and register the contact location. Resistive technology works great with screens mostly used with stylus or any pointing object. But not very efficient in registering the pin point location when used with finger.
Scientific Terms
Capacitive Touchscreen
The capacitive touch screen is made up of a glass panel that is coated with a material. The property of this material is that it can store electrical charge. So the capacitive touchscreens basically stores electrical charge.
But for good, Human body can also store charge. So, when you touch this screen with your finger, some of these charges on the screen gets transferred to your finger. The oscillator circuits located at the corner of your system will then sense this decrease in the charge on screen and the spot the exact location where touch occurred, and then transfers this specified information to the touchscreen driver software.
Resistive Touchscreen
Is again made up of normal glass panel. However, this glass panel in this case is coated with three layers. Two of these layers being conductive and resistive are kept apart using spacers while the third scratch-resistant layer covers the whole setup.
When the resistive touch screen system is running, current flows through these layers. On a finger touch, the two layers get connected and change in electrical field occurs. The system calculates the coordinates of point of contact and passes them to touch screen driver software.
Pros And Cons
Capacitive Touchscreen
Pros:
- Multi touch support available.
- Visibility good even in sunlight.
- Highly sensitive to finger touch leading to ease of use.
- Not prone to dust particles.
- Glossy look and feel.
- Need to have atleast 5% humidity to achieve capacitive effect.
- More expensive than Resistive touch screen.
- Doesn't work with inanimate objects/fingernails/gloved fingers.
- Latest technology, may need to evolve a bit more.
Resistive Touchscreen
Pros:
- Relatively cheaper
- Can operate with any pointing devices like stylus, pen, nail etc.
- Can operate at any level of humidity.
- Ease of use, as it could be used even with your winter gloves on.
- Very useful for people using handwriting recognition system, due to ease of use with a stylus.
- More accurate than capacitive touch screen.
- Old technology and hence more reliable.
- Multi touch support not available. Though technology did evolve after some modifications with the existing resistive touch screen circuitry, its still not 100% developed yet.
- Highly sensitive. As it can operate with almost any sort of pointing devices, can be more vulnerable with dust particles.
- Poor visibility in sunlight, mostly due to multiple layers reflecting light.
- Screen, being sensitive at the upper layer, can be more vulnerable to scratches.
Video
Summary
C=Capacitive Touchscreen
R=Resistive Touchscreen
Visibility Indoors
C => Screen quality is good and clear when viewed in the room.
R => screen quality is good and clear when viewed in the room
Visibility in sunlight
C => Quality screen is good and clear when viewed outdoors.
R => Quality screen less good and hard to see when outdoors.
Touch Sensitivity
C => Quite a bit just touches the surface of the screen will respond but could only respond to a finger and can not respond to touch of the stylus or nails.
R => Have pressed for an existing contact with the screen and can respond to pressure from the fingers, fingernails, and other stylus.
Accuracy
C => Limited accuracy in a matter of a few pixels and is limited at the touch of a finger that is so do not ever wish you well when drawing.
R => very accurate even to the pixel to pixel display with this type of consequence we can draw very well with the help of the stylus. And very useful when used for handwriting recognition (handwriting recognition).
Cost
C => More expensive than Resistive approximately 10-50%.
R => Cheaper production costs.
Possibility For Multi Touch
C => Possible but it depends on the existing hardware and software.
R => Not possible to be able to use the Multi Touch feature.
Robustness
C => Use the glass when done on the outside so it will not easily scratched or broken.
R => Because of the nature of the screen that quite smooth (can be pressed) then the risk of blisters and cracked the screen becomes larger.
http://nerdscube.com/2010/10/difference-between-resistive-and-capacitive-touch-screen/
http://yampblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/resistive-vs-capacitive-touch-screens.html
http://www.itechdiary.com/resistive-vs-capacitive.html [ Pendapat peribadi kalo nak guna jari cam hp dengan lancar, lembut n senang lebih baik pilih capacitive, tp kalo nk pakai stylus wat lukis2 ka guna stylus, xnk guna jari, amikla resistive... =) ]
