Hollywood's showman, Steven Spielberg, in his movie Minority Report showcased the 'touch panel' technology to trawl through files of impending criminals. At that time, jaw-opening audiences might have dreamt of possessing such a next generation gadget. Though, touch screen phones have now come into existence to quell the consumer's thirst to possess such a magic gadget. And are set to become one of the biggest emerging trends in the mobile phone form factor.

Touch phone consumers feel that they get a kind of beyond-the-worldly-experience when they interact with touch panel phones like iPhones. This unique feeling is the single most important factor for its popularity. For traditional phones with keyboard, users have to worry about keys getting damaged over a period of time, but for touch phones one can be free from this hassle. The touchscreen interface where technology is used in mobile phones, particularly smartphones, kiosks, portable game consoles, and cameras where applications actually drive the demand for such interface. The technology has also influenced the form factor of PDAs and satellite navigation. Nintendo DS gaming console primarily uses touchscreen technology for many games as a device to send inputs.

Touch to Operate
Finger touch on a touchscreen is detected by technologies embedded in the handset, and the location of touches within the display area acts as an input device like any keyboard or mouse, to interact with menu of the phones. Successfully infusing a man's first sense of touch to a machine requires a lot of technologies to be applied, including resistive principle, surface acoustic wave technology, capacitive technology, infrared, strain guage, optical imaging, dispersive signal technology, etc.

Resistive touch panel contains many layers sandwiched by thin space that act as a medium to pass on the touch sense. Sharp objects can damage the layers which are otherwise water and dust resistant. Surface acoustic wave technology's ultrasonic waves helps pass the touch sense.

Players in the Fray
Touchscreen phone models have sparked a price war between handset manufacturer Palm, and iPhone-famous Apple. If an annoucement of touchscreen phones can take a vendor's share 9% up, its popularity and impact can be understood, as shares of mobile handset manufacturer Palm witnessed after it announced that its touchscreen phone Centro would be sold through Verizon, a service provider in the US. Apple recently introduced iPhone 3G slashing its price to $199, just half that of the original model.

Realizing the success of other handset manufacturers, Nokia has also entered the fray with vows to launch touch phones in late 2008. Its new touchphone model will use an enhanced version of the Symbian Series 60 OS dubbed S60 Touch, and is likely to sport many of the iPhone-like features showcased a year ago, including a natural-gesture photo browser and music playback controls. Handset manufacturer, Motorola, too has in its kitty scores of touch phone products.

Though touch phones have many advantages, they have their own disadvantages as well. Disadvantage with touch phones is that users cannot type the text without seeing the screen, but this is possible in key phones once the user gets used to it. But when we view the rate of adoption of this form factor by various handset manufacturers, and the mobile phone users enthusiasm to embrace this unique style, touch phones are most likely to become a big time hit once the flaws associated with it are rectified.

Kannan K
kannan@cybermedia.co.in