5 Things You Didn’t Know About Resistive Touchscreens

Sep 30, 2021

Resistive touchscreens are a popular choice for commercial applications. If you’re looking for one or more touchscreen devices to use for business-related activities, you may want to choose this technology. All resistive touchscreens feature two layers of resistive material with patterned electrodes. Performing a touch command will press the layers together so that the device can identify your touch command. Below are five facts about resistive touchscreens.

#1) Supports Multi-Touch Commands

Capacitive touchscreens aren’t the only type of touchscreen devices that support multi-touch commands. Many resistive touchscreens support them as well. With multi-touch commands, you can touch two or more areas of the display interface at the same time. It’s commonly used for pinch-to-zoom and similar types of commands.

#2) Water Resistant

You don’t have to worry about moisture or other liquids damaging resistive touchscreens. They offer a high level of water resistance — even more so than capacitive touchscreens. The water-resistant properties of resistive touchscreens, in fact, is one of the reasons why they are so popular in the workplace. Restaurants, for instance, often use point-of-sale (POS) terminals that feature a resistive touchscreen. With a resistive touchscreen, there’s little or no risk of moisture damage.

#3) Control With a Bare Finger or Gloved Finger

You can control resistive touchscreens with a bare finger or a gloved finger. Some touchscreens, of course, require a bare finger. Most capacitive touchscreens fall under this category. If you wear gloves while controlling a capacitive touchscreen, it won’t recognize your touch commands. This isn’t a concern with resistive touchscreens because they use pressure to identify touch commands rather than capacitance.

#4) Four- and Five-Wire Configurations

Resistive touchscreens are available in four- and five-wire configurations. Both types feature the same underlying technology. Nonetheless, there are nuances between four-wire resistive touchscreen and five-wire resistive touchscreens. Five-wire resistive touchscreens offer a higher level of precision. They can detect the location of touch commands more accurately than four-wire resistive touchscreens.

Resistive is the world’s second-most popular type of touchscreen technology. It’s only surpassed by capacitive technology. Capacitive touchscreens are the most popular. You can find smartphones, tablets, computer monitors and other touchscreens that feature capacitive technology. With that said, resistive isn’t far behind. While there are over a half-dozen touchscreen technologies, resistive is the second-most popular, while capacitive is the most popular.

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