Why Do Touchscreens Respond To Fingers Only

Browsing Nairaland.com and a good day and I came across a topic asking:

Reasons Androids Respond Only To Fingers

I know we have a lot of genius and brilliant people in this place. Ok. This is my question. Why is it that phones like androids, ipad, ipod etc does not respond to other things like erazer, pen,plastic,metals etc but only to human fingers and body?
 So as I do always observe as well, but I do neglect to find out the reason why. This time around I did not push it aside but I do try to find out why, hence my finding as follow:

  1. The answer lies in the type of screens that almost all handheld devices now use, which are known as “capacitive touchscreens”.  Unlike “resistive touchscreens” (think old Palm Pilots with a stylus, some points of sale machines in checkout lines, and certain screens in hospitals and restaurants), which rely on pressure against the screen to register touch, capacitive touchscreens require contact with something that can conduct electricity (e.g., your finger, certain special styli, etc) to function.
    In a nutshell, capacitive touchscreens work like this: humans conduct electricity and touchscreens have an electrical charge (or field).  When you touch the screen you distort the screen’s electrostatic field at the point (or points) of contact which triggers the (hopefully) intended action in the device (e.g., opening an app, typing a letter, zooming in, etc)


  2. It depends on the type of touch screen.Basically, there are two types of touch screens, capacitive and resistive. Today's smartphone has a capacitive touchscreen which works on electrical properties of human body.Hence, if you use some other material, let's say plastic, which doesn't have electrical property cannot induce a charge on the screen.Therefore it doesn't work. Now in case of a phone with resistive touch screen, It works on the pressure applied by the material. So, if you see some older touch screen phone, they also use stylus(made of plastics) apart from fingers to operate.
I guess the above is the reason Why Do Touchscreens Respond To Fingers Only or some body part

Answer Source

Post a Comment

0 Comments