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Smartphone touch-screen test puts the iPhone ahead

by Julian Prokaza on Tuesday 12 January 2010 4 Comments

MOTO Labs has published the results of an interesting test that shows the difference in accuracy and sensitivity between the touch-sensitive displays on a handful of leading smartphones.

The test involved slowly drawing diagonal lines across the screen with a fingertip in a drawing app and MOTO Labs (no relation to Motorola) tried four smartphones — the Apple iPhone, HTC Droid Eris, Motorola Droid (Milestone in the UK) and Google Nexus One. All use capacitive touch-screens, but not all use multi-touch (which wasn’t part of the test, anyway).

MOTO Labs performed two tests — one with light finger pressure and one with medium finger pressure. Accurate tracking of a slow-moving contact point is much more difficult than a fast moving one, which is why it’s easier to draw a straight line with a mouse in a drawing application by moving it quickly. Applying light pressure to a touch-screen makes tracking harder still, since the screen must be sensitive enough to detect the feather-light touch of a fingertip.

The MOTO Labs results photo shows screen on the four phones for both tests — straight lines area sign of an accurate, sensitive touch-screen, while wavy lines are not.

The iPhone came out on top in both tests, although wavy lines at the screen edges indicate that the display’s sensitivity isn’t uniform across its entire expanse. The other three smartphones didn’t fare quite so well, with light finger pressure confusing all of them into producing wriggly lines.

If it seems like a silly test, it’s worth bearing in mind that accuracy and sensitivity are of utmost importance for a small touch-screen that’s designed to be used with a finger. Clicking links on a web page that’s viewed full size, for example, can mean aiming for an area that’s just a few pixels across and having to zoom into a page before you can accurately click its ‘Next’ button makes for a poor user experience.

[ Moto Labs]

Originally published on www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk, now incorporated into Broadband Genie

 

Comments

  • unhappy

    by motosurf95 at 12:18 on 13 Jan 2010Report abuse

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/42580856@N08/4264037413/
  • unhappy

    by Chris Putnam at 17:52 on 13 Jan 2010Report abuse

    so what kind of scientific controls did you use to make sure the pressure, speed and other variables involved remained constant across all tests? was the application code exactly the same on iphone vs android (obviously not). Anyway this is a stupid test that neither concludes or demonstrates anything.
  • neutral

    by Julian Prokaza at 12:15 on 15 Jan 2010Report abuse

    We didn't perform the test, Chris — Moto Labs did. Since fingers were used rather than some automated device, pressure, speed and uniform motion are all variables that could have influenced the results, but assuming the tester tried to keep these all equal, this is still an interesting (though not conclusive) test.
  • happy

    by Amy at 06:43 on 31 Mar 2010Report abuse

    I'm thinking about getting an iPhone to replace my Nokia 63 cell phone. I'm on the fence though because I'm not convinced that upgrading from one to the other is all that worth the money. Should I stick with the cell phone or go iPhone?

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