Touchscreens

Myrmidon

They're cooler, but they are actively less useful and lead to more infuriating mistakes. Fuck touchsceens.

 

/broke his Kindle and got a new one with touchscreen interface.

Ironweaver

It's 2012 and I still don't own a single touchscreen device.

And I can't use touchscreen for shit.

Saturn

Well, people who don't use them are (eventually) going to have to.

ClockworkUniverse

Yeah, it's good to brace yourself for the day when the police kick down your door and forcibly remove all physical keyboards from your house.

Saturn

Touche.

Tools

/istypingonsmartphone



I'm used to touch screens now, but it's annoying that they can't be used when wearing gloves.

Ironweaver

To be fair, it's really awkard to use any electronic gadget with gloves, touchscreen or not.

Alkthash

They sell special gloves for phone addicts actually.

Tools

Pah! I will risk losing my fingers to the cold and wet so I can change a song on my phone.

Saigyouji

It's really awkward to use anything with gloves. Especially if they're too big.

Crimson

Yeah, it's good to brace yourself for the day when the police kick down your door and forcibly remove all physical keyboards from your house.

They can take my keyboard and mouse when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!

Seriously though touchscreens aren't THAT bad, typing is pretty easy when you get used to it, especially  if you have something like Swype.

But other trivial stuff like highlighting text and copy/pasting is a gigantic pain in the ass.

Ironweaver

They sell special gloves for phone addicts actually.

You mean, fingerless ones?

I never got the point of them (apart from style, of course). Fingertips are the most sensitive part of the hand and get cold most easily.

Saturn

No, gloves with special fingertips that react to touchscreens.

They are pretty cheap.

Ironweaver

Ah, never heard of those before.

Crimson

^^^They're for when you want to protect your hands but need your fingers unrestricted for fine detail work.

Or cosplaying as a Pokemon Trainer.

Saigyouji

I don't get why most touchscreens tend to be capacitive instead of resistive anyway.

Crimson

Because resistive is horrible.

glennmagusharvey

Oh wow, I haven't actually made a thread complaining singly about touchscreens yet.

Yeah, I don't like touchscreens.  My experience with them has been a couple cell phones so far.  I much prefer having a physical numpad or keyboard.  Physical keypads can be used far faster and more accurately than touchscreens can.  With touchscreens, you:

• have to wait for the appropriate button to appear before it can be pressed.  This takes time that could be saved if you were using a keyboard and simply memorized the key/button combo to do whatever it is you want to do.


• have to look at the screen to make sure you're pressing the right button.  Well, unless you have excellent muscle memory, you easily risk hitting the wrong number when just moving your finger around quickly.


• lose the ability use the device out of sight, especially such as inside your pocket, handbag, or other container.  Again, unless you have excellent muscle memory and know the placement of whatever screen feature it is you're manipulating.

Nyktos

My brother has/had touchscreen gloves. They were kinda cool. I never wear gloves anyway.

In general I like touchscreens but I absolutely hate "typing" on them.

Saturn

Gmh, false. touch screens can text much faster.

Crimson

This is true actually. World records were broken using touchscreens (with Swype but still).

glennmagusharvey

Anyone else notice that you need to look at touchscreens in order to use them, but you can't see through your fingers?

 

Anyhow, another problem with touchscreens--on phones, the screen automatically locks when you talk.  That's pretty much a given especially if you have a capacitative touchscreen--otherwise you'd be hanging up the call with your cheek.  So what does this mean?

1. phone auto-locks when calling.  If your phone doesn't have a separate speakerphone button, you need to press a button to make the screen reappear, then unlock the screen, then press the onscreen speaker button just to activate speakerphone.  And since you don't have eyes on your cheeks, you have to take the phone away from your ear to do this.  And during that time, you can't hear jack shit of what happened on the other end of the line.


2. Do you need to access touch-tone numbers to navigate the company directory that you're calling?  Well, once again, you have to take the phone away from your ear and waste precious time pressing a button to make the screen reappear, then unlock the screen, then press the dial pad button and watch it slide in, then look at the numbers and press the one(s) you want.

See, with a keypad phone, I could do this without the phone ever leaving my ear.  I mean, my hand's already there, so my thumb just slides over to the appropriate buttons and presses them, right beneath my ear.

 

Another problem with touchscreens, and also with laptop touchpads using tap-to-click: You have to make sure you move your finger a significant enough distance, if you want to move something.  Or else the touchscreen interface will think you're clicking.  Small corrections are hard and problematic.

glennmagusharvey

Gmh, false. touch screens can text much faster.

I don't know about you, but I can type far faster on a physical keyboard than on, say, an iPad keyboard of equivalent size.

 

Anyway, here's the last thread I made that involved me complaining about touchscreens sucking (among other things): http://itjustbugsme.com/forums/discussion/11006/changing-our-phones-has-wiped-my-photos-broken-my-moms-sd-card-/p1

Crimson

iPad

There's your problem. I was talking exclusively about cellphones.

For anything than bigger than a Samsung OneNote, keyboard/mouse all the way.

glennmagusharvey

Ah.  Well I can't type for crap anyway on a cell phone keyboard anyhow, even if it's physical.  Haven't texted enough to build up my experience.

Forzare

I love my iPad, but the touchscreen keyboard is pretty terrible for actual typing.

I can type way, way faster on my iPhone than I can on any physical phone I've ever had, though.

ClockworkUniverse

My phone has a feature that lets it vibrate for one quick pulse when I hit a touchscreen key. Makes things slightly better.

glennmagusharvey

I can enable that too, but that doesn't help any.  It only confirms to me after I touch something that I touched it, rather than telling me beforehand what I'm about to touch (which is impossible, I know, but that's what it would have to do to substitute for my tactile memory of things like keypads).  And the signal isn't distinct based on what I touched, so it contains very little information.

Noimporta

My problem with touchscreens is that they make for poor controllers for anything not designed specifically for them, which is a lot of things. Playing Megaman X on an Ipod is suffering.

All Nines

As small as phone keyboards have to be to fit, I would be much more annoyed having to deal with the little grooves between each key on a physical keyboard.

Bastion

It took me a little while to get used to, but now I prefer touchscreens. Having the keyboard on the screen means the screen can be bigger. Unless it's a design like the Droid where the keyboard slides out, but that's another point of failure for the device--it's really prone to wear and tear, to say nothing of being dropped.



Plus you can't get gunk in a virtual keyboard.



"I never got the point of them (apart from style, of course). Fingertips are the most sensitive part of the hand and get cold most easily."



It's not like a mitten, it's when you need to protect your palms while still using your fingers. That's while motorcyclists wear them.