Touch Screen Evolution

Touch screen software was initially used in kiosk systems, POS terminals, ATM's and on PDA's. With raising popularity of smart phones, modern PDA's, GPS's and portable game consoles, the demand for touch-screen technologies slowly increased. Early touch-screen displays could only sense a single point of input at a time and only a few of them were capable of detecting the strength of the pressure.

This was changed with Apples ongoing commercialization of the multi-touch technology with iPhone and iPod touch. Multi-touch allows the user to interact with the screen with fingers, instead of a stylus. The movement of fingers creates gestures, which are then sent to the touch screen software. Popularity of iPhone, has brought touch-screen technology to many smart phones and hand-held devices.

Many companies have upgraded their products, either by adding a multi/touch support to the track-pad or by making their Tablet PC's interact-able without the stylus. Some companies specialize in production of large wall-mounted or table surfaces. Most notable are Microsoft's Surface and Perceptive Pixel's Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall.

Both wall mounted and table mounted displays have had a few ergonomic problems. "Gorilla arm" was a side effect that destroyed wall mounted touch-screen as a mainstream. Developers of touch-screen systems, failed to notice, that humans are not built to hold their arms high for a long period of time, making small and precise motions at the same time. Table mounted displays do not share this problem, however, users can develop neck pain after using it for a period of time and their view is obstructed by their arms.

Limited one-finger touch-screen capability has been available before, but Windows 7 is the first to deliver multi-touch. You can zoom in by placing your fingers on the screen and spread them apart.

This is how touch screen has come into limelight. And in current days you can easily observe how people has gone crazy for touch screen mobiles, tablets etc in their day to day accessories.

Best Touch Phones

iPhone
Apple's iPhone has outstanding touch screens. It featured a touch screen interface with no additional keyboard attached, so all typing was done directly on the screen. The iPhone was groundbreaking in the mobile phone industry. It popularized the idea of apps on your mobile phone. Apps are programs you install and run on your phone to perform a variety of tasks, ranging from counting calories to keeping track of grocery lists. Apple also created a new market for third party app developers through its public API program. Once a developer is accepted into the program, he can write apps for iPhones and sell those apps through Apple's App Store.
 
Droid
Motorola introduced the Droid phone which comes with Google's mobile interface and platform, voice-to-text and voice search features, Gmail, Google Maps, satellite navigation and a sliding keyboard so you can type on either the keyboard or the touch screen. Like the iPhone, the Droid has thousands of apps available you can download and install. You can connect to other email accounts like Yahoo or your corporate account and sync contacts from email and social networking accounts to your phone's contact list.


Focus
The Samsung Focus is one of the Windows Phone 7 phones. It's the new platform from Microsoft designed to compete with iPhone and Droid. The Windows Phone 7 platform includes many of the Microsoft products, such as Internet Explorer, Outlook email, the Bing search engine, Zune music libraries and Xbox LIVE gaming. You can open, create and edit Microsoft Office documents, like Word, Excel and others in the Microsoft Office suite. It has a 4-inch screen display, a camera and connects to social media accounts. You can download and watch TV shows and search for a variety of apps and games to install.