Touching? Or Not?

Touchscreens? I love them.

Cheers,

ethobil

I just purchased a new phone, and opted to not get a touchscreen. My main reasoning was simple: I'm hard on anything that is on my person or with me for any duration of time. I got the most durable phone i could find, and i'll most likely still have it broken within months. My last phone was speckeled with small burn marks from weld spatter burning trough my clothes and onto the phone, and my dog consumed the antenna.

So, no touchy for me.

LOL--Next trip to Portland and I spot a guy yelling into a duct taped cell phone that works intermittently, I will say "hi"--Hope I don't get the wrong guy--

Isn't life great, though?

RVZ717, sorry about your phone, but that is funny.

RVZ717,

That's sure, different strokes for different folks . Many of my pals out here like them for various reasons too.

Cheers,

ethobil

sounds like shes just a high maintenance priss

No touch screens please. Too easy to have unintended consquences and the fragile nature of touchscreens on portable items is an issue too. I am also hard on equipment. I would be happy to use the phone I have now for five years or more but they seem to be destined to break in two years or less. I suspect the ultra-low pitch of the components and the lack of lead is resulting in shortened life for these phones. When my current phone is in need of replacement, I will put it under a microscope and look for evidence of tin whiskering. I'm concerned that RoHS may be resulting in more electronics going to the landfill because of reliability problems. May be another case of unintended consequences.

My cell phone is 4 years old. This didn't seem important or relevant to me in any way until I started having reception problems in my apartment. While trouble shooting with the verizon person (nothing seeming to work), the verizon person brought this up. They seemed rather stunned that my phone was that old. I realized at that moment that I was completely decoupled from the whole cell phone thing. I don't text, even when I recieve texts I call back, I don't change my ringtone, I don't take cameraphone images. What's the opposite of a power user? Me.

Some people might be proud of this, but it makes me a little sad. There was a time when I was younger when I was on top of every new innovation and techy thing that came out. Now we are having a debate on touch screens and the only ones I've ever used are friends when they showed me their new phone/gps whatever. I wish I had an opinion on this but I don't. I have no idea what happened to me.

but it makes me a little sad.

NO NO NO! Don't be sad...
It means you havn't been sucked into that mad pit of depravity which is burning up the worlds resources for no good reason for the sake of some trivial function which no one really wants or needs...it's only a few steps from the the Emeror's New Clothes.
Here have a KrisDel^TM 'Sadbegone' anti sad sticker...they are shiny and sparkly and almost as much use as a mobile phone.
BTW we are bringing out a new version shortly...

Del

Mobiles with touchscreens have their pros and cons. I have not played with an Iphone yet - I have a Samsung F700v with their "touchy-feely" haptic technology touch screen - the screen vibrates when touched.

Some pros:

soft feel

quick response

easy navigation

variable navigation speed

reduced multiple key presses

inherent accidental key push lock out (can only be finger or, I suppose, some other body part)

Some cons:

Less "hands free" - one has to push a mechanical key button to access the touch screen then a touch key to take a call. One also has to look where the touch key is on the screen. One cannot just slide the phone to answer a call

Particularly when browsing on the web, the active touch area can be quite small or close to another, so accuracy in touching the screen is important and sometimes tricky

Occasionally temperamental. I have had the occasion with incoming calls when, touching the screen does nothing and the phone keeps on ringing. The natural reaction is to press a little harder... and harder... It can be a bit embarassing. However, what seems to work is to use a finger from the other hand - must be some capacitance or earthing issue.

Cannot put a protective cover over the screen

All in all, I am reasonably happy with the touchscreen part of it. However I should add that the real reason for buying this particular phone was the full qwerty slide-out keyboard. This keyboard is old flexible-membrane mechanical technology so, go figure..

Brgds

I have complete confidence that once the masses start using touchscreen technology on cell phones it will lead to a broadening of technology use similar to the advancement of PCs when operators started using Windows instead of DOS.

For years I have been designing and installing custom electrical controls for machines. Today, programmable industrial touchscreens are the most common operator interfaces for complex machines in factories. It is easy to understand why this is the case when training new users. There is a dramatic difference in the learning curve between training a new operator to use a bunch of labeled push buttons versus training an operator to use a graphically oriented touch screen. It is essentially as Microsoft put it years ago, "Just point and click," or in this case, "Just point and press."

Computers were pretty much just tech-gadgets for people with aptitude, patience, and skill until Window's made them graphically oriented. Clicking on a picture of piece of paper with a little writing on it made it possible for anyone to open a word processing program without having to memorize syntax or know what any of the special keys on the keyboard are used for. I predict that touchscreens will make advanced features on cell phones such as texting, file transfering, web surfing, etc. just as accessible to the average individual as to skilled users, and eventually touchscreens will become the norm. Everyone will either have a touchscreen cell phone or want to have a touchscreen cell phone.

I was very impressed with the HP Touchsmart when I played with one at the store.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/31875/review/touchsmart_iq506.html

They really didn't give it the best of reviews, and I'm not buying one anyway, because it runs Blista.

After Christmas, I plan to buy a new home computer. I think this one:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/30471/review/imac.html

I'll be doing no "work" on it, it's just for fun. I like to play with photo's and video's. Video's are a real pain on my pc, and I've heard and read the imac is perfect for this.