Touchscreens offer significant benefits to designers and users as mobile devices become a primary messaging, calendaring, and multimedia terminal. With screens needing to be larger to accommodate richer data and more complex applications, there is less device real estate available for dedicated mechanical keys.

Touchscreens can provide virtual keypads adaptable to different operating modes through software control. For example, they can display a standard numeric keypad for voice dialing, then switch to a menu system optimized for e-mail. Directly touching an onscreen object to trigger a function or manipulate data comes very naturally to users.

Beyond their promise for transforming handset interfaces, touchscreens are becoming more attractive to handset OEMs as their costs lower towards parity with mechanical keypads. Further, touchscreens are recognized to have higher potential durability than mechanical keypads in mobile applications where dirt, grease, and water are potential problems.

"We believe that market conditions are almost ripe for an explosion in touch screen phones and that by 2012 as many as 40% of mobile phones could be using some form of touch sensitive technology."

— Stuart Robinson, director of the Handset Component Technologies, Strategy Analytics, a global research and consulting firm

 

Why Your Touchscreen Needs Tactile Feedback

• Onscreen buttons feel more real, physical
• Can improve usability:
  • When controls are obscured by fingers or washed out by glare
  • When you’re engaged in other tasks
  • When the environment is too noisy or requires quiet
• Can improve efficiency and error rate
• Can convey information that is private, immediate, dynamic, or confirming
• Several studies show users strongly prefer tactile feedback — because it helps improve their performance and makes them feel more in control