Nowadays, touchscreen displays are standard and have become a part of everyday life through mobile devices. The first touchscreen was introduced by E.A. Johnson from 1957 to 1967. A touchscreen is a direct manipulation type of gesture-based technology. It is an assembly of a touch panel and a display device.
Touchscreen technology: How does it work? Tech behind swipe stuff?
It is designed as an alternative to a keyboard or mouse to navigate a graphical user interface (GUI). Some devices also use a touchscreen with a grid of infrared sensors that sense a finger, negating the need for touch-sensitive input. However, do you know how touchscreen technology works? Let us try to understand how this technology works.
How do touch screens work?
The touch screen is the most essential part of a device because it allows users to interact with it. There is more to it than just moving your finger across a touchscreen. When touchscreens were first introduced to the market, people were used to buttons and would say, “Texting could never be the same without buttons.”
The first touchscreen was developed in the 1960s using a capacitive design named Capacitive Touchscreen. It worked by coating glass with an electrically conductive surface. These are the most basic and standard touchscreens. The human hand has an electric charge, so whenever a human hand comes into contact with the screen, the processor senses an input.
However, these touchscreens cannot work under certain conditions, such as condensation from cold, wet weather, because they get wet. This causes random pressure, and surface materials, such as dirt or oil, can quickly impact a capacitive touch screen’s functionality. As time passed and speed and sensitivity became more critical than readability and functionality, resistive screens came onto the market.
When durability matters, resistive screens are a better option than capacitive screens. We mainly find these screens in ATMs and supermarkets. They are two thin sheets separated by a small gap, with one sheet connected to a voltage sensor. Whenever the screen is touched, it causes the current to sense the layer, which registers an input. Some exciting experiments are going on, but capacitive touchscreens are the standard for now.
3 Components of Touch Screen Technology
Three components of touchscreen technology come together:
- Touch sensor
- The controller.
- Software
Types of Touch Screens
There are three types of touch screens: resistive, surface acoustic wave, and capacitive. Some of the most common touch screens are resistive and capacitive.
- Resistive: It is built with two connected metal layers and functions by changing electric current. This display mostly comes with a stylus.
- Capacitive: It uses a layer of capacitive material that changes with the amount of electrostatic charge.
- Acoustic Wave: It sends waves across the surface of the glass, but they become absorbed when touched with a stylus.
Controller and Software
These are used to determine the location of the stylus based on energy absorption, which can translate to where the touch has been made. After the controller, the details are sent to the software for further processing to react to the touch. It takes some time, but everything happens in nanoseconds in real time.
Examples of touchscreens
You can find touchscreens quite often, varying from range to range. One of the most common is likely to be your smartphone’s touchscreen. Other examples could include ATMs, computers, phones, or grocery stores.