High tech touch screen

[JohnnyS101]

Is the touch screen on a smartphone so high tech that they only allow fingers to touch it and not things like a simple pen by recognizing it, or is our smartphones touchscreen abilities not high tech enough to enable use with a simple pen.

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[dezymond]

The two technologies are different. Older phones used to use Resistive touchscreens, so they react to pressure. Remember older smartphones with the stylus? Those are resistive. Our phones today use capacitive touchscreens which react to the electrical currents from our skin. There are special styluses/pens that can be used on capacitive touchscreens though

[garrett]

Is the touch screen on a smartphone so high tech that they only allow fingers to touch it and not things like a simple pen by recognizing it, or is our smartphones touchscreen abilities not high tech enough to enable use with a simple pen.

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its not the fact of them being not high tech or too high tech.... its the way the capacitive screen works...

Touchscreen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A capacitive touchscreen panel consists of an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor such asindium tin oxide (ITO).^[11][12] As the human body is also an electrical conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of the touch. The location is then sent to the controller for processing. Unlike a resistive touchscreen, one cannot use a capacitive touchscreen through most types of electrically insulating material, such as gloves; one requires a special capacitive stylus, or a special-application glove with an embroidered patch of conductive thread passing through it and contacting the user's fingertip. This disadvantage especially affects usability in consumer electronics, such as touch tablet PCs and capacitive smartphones in cold weather.