What Technology does Touchscreen Laptops Use?

Did you get a smartphone or the Apple’s latest Iphone? It is sure then that you must be admiring their latest touch screen technology. For a glance into the touchscreen technology, it should be known that the main types include resistive and capacitive technologies.

Till now the most common one was the resistive type of technology that included two flexible sheets that were covered up with the resistive materials. Such electrical conductive layers were and are separated with a narrow gap from each other. When the screen is pressed of a touchscreen laptop with the help of a finger or by a stylus then the layers get connected which allows an electrical flow to change. The flow keeps on passing between the layers. Post this, the screen’s registers take this as an input and then calculates which part of the screen was touched or is being touched. Presently the resistive technology is cheaper than the capacitive technology and is found on cheaper tablets due to this. But however the technology has certain disadvantages associated with it. The first disadvantage is that one is required to push the display a bit harder in order to get the register input. And the second disadvantage is that most resistive screens are unable to detect two separate points on the screen and hence they do not support multi- touch actions like pinching and zooming. But the resistive technology has one advantage which includes the touch input works wonders even while one is wearing gloves.

The next touchscreen technology is the capacitive technology that is seen in tablet PCs. It is based on the fact that human body is a conductor. The touchscreens are created using traditional TFT display which is covered with an insulator like glass. After that the insulator layer is coated with a transparent conductor, hence when the screen is touched with a finger then a distortion is created in the electrostatic fields of the display. This is taken by the controller of the display as a change in the capacitance and is registered as a touch input.  Such screens are more responsive. Also capacitive screens are not required to be pressed with pressure in order to register a touch. Most of the capacitive screens are able to detect two or more touch points on the display so that varied activities can be performed like zooming and rotation for web pages, maps and pictures. But however there is only one minor demerit associated with the capacitive touchscreen. If one is wearing gloves then the display becomes non-responsive. And if stylus is used for input then just any stylus cannot be used. The stylus should be used which is specially created for capacitive screens.