Touchscreen

Let’s describe it in more detail. Single-touch technology is touch technology that can only read one touch on the touchpad. The reason for this limitation was originally the limited speed of the relevant processors, and later also the fact that it was not clear what to do with the second touch for the extra money that such fun would cost. If you have a laptop, you can try it out—you probably also have a touchpad. Place your finger on it and move the mouse with it. Place your other finger on it and try to confuse the mouse. It won’t confuse it; it will move according to the average of the touches, because the drivers average them out via the second touch. You can only fool me if you have a newer laptop that responds to two touches—Apple laptops, for example, are equipped with this feature.

As if touch technology weren’t complicated enough, there is also a difference between pen and finger control. Pen control is significantly less demanding on technology because the pen has a negligible tip thickness, so we can abstract from evaluating and analyzing where the user pressed and what they probably meant to press.

The technology chosen by Apple is somewhat more demanding because it requires the use of fingers. Fingers have a touch surface of up to several tens of square millimeters, so it is necessary to evaluate and analyze a number of indicators to determine what the user wanted to click on with their finger. This typically involves analyzing the initial point of pressure, the increase in pressure around the initial point, and the direction of the increase in pressure.

Why? Because it can be used to estimate which finger you used to touch the screen, and each finger has different touch characteristics; you touch the screen slightly differently with each finger. For example, when typing on such a phone, you use the pad of your thumb, while your index finger tends to use the upper bone edge. Correct evaluation is important when there are multiple options that can be touched around the touch point. For example, controlling Safari on such a small display would be a nightmare without good touch technology.

If you’ve ever encountered a QWERTY touch keyboard on the display of a touch device, you’ll probably agree that it wasn’t very usable. You tap the virtual keys with the tip of a stylus, which isn’t very fun or efficient. The new touch technology used in the iPhone promises to radically change this and is the main advantage of the device—it really works.

I should also note that these technologies have been on the market for a long time, two decades. Apple didn’t have to be the first to use them… others simply didn’t try to see them through to the end.

This is also related to the gestures that can be used to control the phone. They are natural. You can rotate an image by placing two fingers diagonally on it and rotating them in the direction you want the image to rotate. It sounds awful (because you have to think about what it means to place your fingers diagonally on the image), but it’s completely intuitive. Perhaps with the exception that I found it easier to use by not twisting my fingers or hand at the wrist, but simply turning the phone with my other hand.

There are dozens of such gestures on the iPhone, and you will also find a number of undocumented gestures that serve as tried and tested intuitive alternatives to the “official” gestures. And these will be gestures that will significantly change the way we use mobile phones.

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