How Supersensitive Screens Get Touch-y (Smartphones Unlocked)

I wasn't aware that being able work a touch screen with a gloved finger was new tech?

Two winters ago I started working at place that went to all touchscreen data logging systems, a year or two before I started, in and outside of our fuel trucks and those devices had very little trouble reading a gloved finger even at -30 F!

So does that mean that cell phone tech is still lagging some 3 - 4 years behind commercial application tech?

It depends on the type of touch screen. Smart phones and many of the ipad devices use projective capacitance to sense touch. Regular gloves prevent this type of touch panel from sensing 'touch'. You can buy gloves now that are made with a conductive fingertip, allowing ProCAP touch panels to sense your touch. This touch technology is popular because it was the first to allow multi-touch for the pinch, zoom, and rotate features used on cell phones.

This report discusses how ProCAP is now improved to allow the use of regular gloves.

Other devices use various types of resistance to sense touch. With these devices the force of the touch actuation creates a contact spot between two parallel conductive planes and the electronics/firmware decode the X-Y position of your touch. Only recently have resistive touch panels been able to incorporate multi-touch for pinch, zoom and rotate. This technology permits the use of ordinary gloves.

The other two main technologies are optical/infrared beams, and surface acoustic wave, and both of these also allow the use of ordinary gloves. I haven't seen any multi-touch panels that use either of these technologies, but if they don't already exist I'd bet the companies that make them are working on multi-touch.