You see it everywhere. You see it in everything. You are probably using one as I am typing this blog. Touch screens are slowly, but surely killing the old ways of button operation. From Ipods to thermostats, the touch screen is the preferred input system for more and more devices emerging in the market. What I would like to accomplish with this post is to go over the benefits of touch screen technology as well as acknowledge some problems.
There are many obvious benefits to having a device with a touch screen (besides feeling like you are using a really cool alien device.) Navigating menus, zooming in and out of web pages using multi-touch, tapping icons to open applications, and just opening so many more doors for simple and effective UI's are definitely benefits to using touch screens. This allows companies to come up with many simple, creative ways for you to operate your device since the whole entire screen can be touched to perform tasks. This makes gaming on devices interesting, it makes swapping through programs fast and effective.
Although there are many benefits to implementing touch screen technology, there are also some problems that will have to be addressed before I completely give up on using buttons. Personally, my main problem is using a touch screen for typing. Cell phones keep getting smaller and smaller and are able to do more and more like text, post things on facebook, write e-mails, play games, and so much more. But, when a phone becomes smaller, so do the buttons. I don't know how many times I have mistyped words on my phone because of how close the letters are to each other and how small they are on the phone. Also, since there are no physical boundaries for each letter, I often find myself hitting things I didn't mean to hit. There is definitely a lot of polish that needs to go into touch screen technology before I am completely sold.
When I got my first touchscreen, I hate it, really. But now I really think I can't go back to a regular phone. I used my dads phone one time and it was so weird going back to a phone with buttons, and its slower. I support touch screen, but not all of them.
ReplyDeleteNow with the release of the iPad, I hope that this means they will eventually design a touch phone that is somewhere in between the size of an iPad and iPhone. I agree that it is hard to type on touch phone devices. I think this type of technology requires that our mobile devices get a little bit larger before they get small again when they find a way to completely eliminate the need for typing or find some other way to accomplish the task.
ReplyDeleteI remember just a few months ago, I was using a buddy of mines cell phone. I was playing with it trying to figure out how to open it up to get to the keypad. After a minute or two of struggling, I asked him how to open it and he said you dont. I didnt know what he was talking about and was like, well where are the numbers? he told me it was all on the screen and there was a way to get to them. I found this really odd and didnt realize that even the numbers were all touch screen as well. I thought it was pretty sweet that it was just simply that easy and there were no actual buttons. I have a cell phone that slides open and I like it and how it comes with a keyboard to make texting quicker and easier. I think for my next phone, I want to try and see what its like to have a touch screen only without a keypad.
ReplyDeleteI got a phone with a touch screen about a year ago. I really like the way I can quickly manage my phone. the touch screen makes it so I never have to scrole through my menu. I just press the option I want. I really don't like texting on it however. It has gotten older and has a hard time figuring out what buttons I'm pushing. This also makes it hard to do quick texts. I spend a lot of time going back and fixing miss typed letters.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely a growing technology and no where near perfect. I enjoy the touch screens but I hate to type with them. What if the touch screen completely falters? Then your device is useless. I will wait a couple more years before I rely on touch screens.
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