Touchscreens are becoming an integral part of our way of life. When we interact with a product that has a touchscreen, we expect it to complete the action we want without a second thought. It wasn’t too far in the past that the idea of a touchscreen was a dream. Yet, today we see it as a standard feature in lots of devices.
How, precisely, does touchscreen technology work? How do so many of our screens know what to do when we touch the icons shown on them? The answer isn’t that straightforward. That’s because there are a few different types of touchscreen technologies, and each of them works in a different way.
Resistive touchscreens
Many touchscreens today operate on the resistive model. Resistive touchscreens are coated with a thin electrically conductive layer. Whenever you touch the screen, your fingertip will cause the electrical current to change. This information is instantly sent to the device’s controller, which causes the device to react to your touch. Resistive touchscreen technology costs less, and is the most frequent form of touchscreen used in products today. However, such touchscreens aren’t the most sensitive.
Surface wave touchscreen
Another popular form of touchscreen is the surface wave model. This type of screen relies on ultrasonic waves that pass across the touchscreen panel. When you touch the panel, you absorb a part of the wave. Again, this sends information to the device’s controller, which in turn tells the unit what you want it to do.
Capacitive touchscreens
Capacitive touchscreens usually have the sharpest image quality. Devices using this technology are coated with a material that sends an electrical current across the screen. As the human body is electrical, whenever you touch the screen, you absorb some of the electric current which disrupts the flow across the device. Just as with the other types of touchscreen, the disruption sends information to the device’s controller. The device then performs the action that you requested, at the touch of a fingertip.
Luckily, we don’t have to truly comprehend the science behind touchscreen technology have fun with it, and we don’t need to be engineers to understand that this technology isn’t going away any time soon.
