A test comparing the accuracy and sensitivity of smartphone touchscreens across various makers gave the iPhone top marks ahead of HTC's Droid Eris and the Google-branded Nexus One, and much better results than the Motorola Droid.
The results, published by MOTO labs, noted that the company (which has no relation to Motorola) "has years of experience developing products that use capacitive touch, and weve had the opportunity to test many of the latest devices. Our conclusion: All touchscreens are not created not equal."
To demonstrate the differences, MOTO developed a simple test applying finger pressure across the screen using a drawing app. Accurate touchscreen performance comes from a variety of factors, the company reported, noting that screen sensitivity is a combination of hardware component quality and design and software integration.
Under light pressure, the iPhone passed the test with straight, unbroken lines, with only a loss in sensitivity occurring at the extreme edges of the device. The Droid Eris, Nexus One and Droid all experienced stair-stepping accuracy problems.
"On inferior touchscreens, its basically impossible to draw straight lines," MOTO reports. "Instead, the lines look jagged or zig-zag, no matter how slowly you go, because the sensor size is too big, the touch-sampling rate is too low, and/or the algorithms that convert gestures into images are too non-linear to faithfully represent user inputs."
"This is important," MOTO explained, "because quick keyboard use and light flicks on the screen really push the limits of the touch panels ability to sense."
One user commenting on the results wrote, "accuracy does matter, as anyone who has used a Droid vs an iPhone can tell you. It is much easier to accurately touch small HTML links on the iPhone than the Droid without zooming in, as one example. One can definitely feel the difference in everyday use in the greater accuracy the iPhone has over other touchscreen phones."
The results, published by MOTO labs, noted that the company (which has no relation to Motorola) "has years of experience developing products that use capacitive touch, and weve had the opportunity to test many of the latest devices. Our conclusion: All touchscreens are not created not equal."
To demonstrate the differences, MOTO developed a simple test applying finger pressure across the screen using a drawing app. Accurate touchscreen performance comes from a variety of factors, the company reported, noting that screen sensitivity is a combination of hardware component quality and design and software integration.
Under light pressure, the iPhone passed the test with straight, unbroken lines, with only a loss in sensitivity occurring at the extreme edges of the device. The Droid Eris, Nexus One and Droid all experienced stair-stepping accuracy problems.
"On inferior touchscreens, its basically impossible to draw straight lines," MOTO reports. "Instead, the lines look jagged or zig-zag, no matter how slowly you go, because the sensor size is too big, the touch-sampling rate is too low, and/or the algorithms that convert gestures into images are too non-linear to faithfully represent user inputs."
"This is important," MOTO explained, "because quick keyboard use and light flicks on the screen really push the limits of the touch panels ability to sense."
One user commenting on the results wrote, "accuracy does matter, as anyone who has used a Droid vs an iPhone can tell you. It is much easier to accurately touch small HTML links on the iPhone than the Droid without zooming in, as one example. One can definitely feel the difference in everyday use in the greater accuracy the iPhone has over other touchscreen phones."
Am I reading this right???? Is Appleinsder actually using completely unsubstantiated anonymous comments and reporting them as if this were actual verifiable user experiences? I could care less about the argument, but Appleinsider needs someone to tell them that random people posting on the internet don't qualify as trustworthy sources for real world experiences. If Appleinsider feels that its important to draw conclusions beyond the scope of the article they are reporting on, then they should get off their asses and verify this behavior for themselves with a few simple tests (go ahead AI, if you like when other sites link to you and say "Appleinsider is reporting" maybe you should think about meeting some minimal diligence as a journalist and pick up the devices for yourself).
and it would roll to the bottom of a stack while the other app in the background would pop-up top. What do you say about that? 
