Touchscreens have been in development for decades before the days of smartphones and tablets, all the way back to the 1960s. The first touchscreen cellphone arrived in 1993 courtesy of IBM and BellSouth with the Simon Personal Communicator.
Today, we see touchscreens everywhere from our phones to our cars, appliances, and everything in between. There are five types of touchscreen technologies:
RESISTIVE
This type operates on the pressure applied to the screen by a fingernail, finger, or stylus object. Made up of multiple layers, when the screen is pressed by your finger, the first layer is pushed onto a secondary, activating the device’s interior technology to register where the pressure is applied and act accordingly.
CAPACITIVE
Beginning with the first-generation iPhone, this type of touchscreen works by sensing the conductive properties of a nearby object (the skin on your fingertip) instead of relying on the pressure of a stylus. Ever wonder why those “touchscreen” gloves don’t work? See the above-mentioned TED Talks.
NEAR-FIELD IMAGING (NFI)
Similar to capacitive, NFI measures electrostatic fields surrounding the screen to register the touch commands. The strength of this technology’s measurement capabilities allows it to operate in harsh conditions and is often a go-to for devices in the security and defense industries.
INFRARED
Most used in ticketing kiosks, ATMs, and beverage dispensers, infrared touchscreens are very different from those screens in our Samsung Galaxy or iPhone, and much more expensive to produce. Working with a grid of LEDs, when the screen is touched, the matrix beam of LEDs is interrupted allowing the device to detect an input location and act accordingly.
SURFACE ACOUSTIC WAVE (SAW OR ULTRASOUND)
Newer, and far more advanced, than its four competitors, SAW touchscreen technology uses ultrasound waves across the screen. The sound waves become interrupted when you touch the screen, allowing the device to detect the command. Highly sensitive, this touchscreen is not recommended for outdoor use solutions as water droplets on the screen will continually disrupt and cause false triggering.