Are touch screen phones a unanimous step forward in technology?

In a previous article, I questioned whether the iPhone—or more accurately, its wild popularity—is stunting mobile phone research and development.  Why?  Because Apple became a major cell phone player overnight and its relative growth vastly outpaces the growth of competitors and even growth of the overall market.  Apple and the iPhone have jolted the slumbering competition to life, and competitors have jumped on the touch screen bandwagon.  But as manufacturers play catch-up and try to fashion their own devices with touch screens, will we see any more real innovation in the market for a while?  Or are manufacturers just engaging in a features war with Apple?  Furthermore, are touch-based devices a unanimous step forward in technology?

Back in November, I entered the smart phone world with the purchase of the Sprint HTC Touch Diamond.  While it has some drawbacks, it’s a good phone and does everything I wanted it to do: checks email from multiple accounts, syncs with my Exchange calendar, backs up data to the cloud, runs various apps, and provides a solid web browsing experience.  HTC did a good job of hiding the more touch-unfriendly aspects of Windows Mobile 6.1 through the elegant TouchFlo 3D interface. 

Lately, though, I’ve been pining for a keypad.  I know, I could’ve gotten the HTC Touch Pro (or AT&T HTC Fuze).  But I intentionally opted for the touch-only Diamond.  I’m leery of multiple moving parts on phones—especially when it involves such a critical component—and have always preferred non-flip phones.  Plus, when I think about the use cases where I’d want the keypad, the landscape, slide-out version wouldn’t really help.  For instance, I want a keypad for better one-handed use.  However, the landscape keyboard on the Touch Pro basically necessitates two-handed use.  Plus, switching back and forth between vertical and horizontal use depending on the app didn’t seem ideal.  And finally, I wanted to go full-bore into the touch screen experience without the crutch of a keypad.  Hey, if iPhone users could get used to it, so could I, right?

Right.  But after several months of use, I can declare that some drawbacks to touch screens have nothing to do with an adjustment period.  Below are some reasons why touch screens might not necessarily be a technological step forward.

No muscle memory.  Take a look around your office and note the iPhone users: they walk around, heads down, elbows tight to their sides, clutching their phones with two hands.  Touch screen phones engulf you in the experience because you have to look at the screen when typing or pressing any “buttons” because your hands don’t have a frame of reference.  With my last phone, a Motorola Slivr, I got fairly adept at texting using the standard number pad.  I’ve never needed T9 or any of those predictor programs because I just can type the word faster.  Furthermore, while I tried not to do it often, I could text when driving if I had to because typing didn’t require my full attention.  Not so with the Touch Diamond.  Typing is a concerted effort and, as a result, I really avoid texting when driving.  Seriously.  If i do have to text, it’s mostly short msgs.  For safety reasons, maybe that’s a good thing.  But in terms of technological progress, it’s not.  To me, better technology would require less concentration, allowing you to multitask.  With a tactile keypad, you can learn the location of keys through muscle memory, so to speak.  That way, your eyes are on the screen (or the road, if driving)—not the keys.  Not so with touch screens.  They’re like high-maintenance divas who demand your full attention.

The “track pad effect.”  I’m one of those people that prefers the little nubbin-based control on laptops instead of the track pad.  Why?  Leverage.  Just moving the nubbin slightly moves the cursor a lot.  On the other hand, moving the cursor across the screen often requires multiple swipes across a track pad.  Touch screens are the same way.  Take something like web browsing.  Yeah, it’s cool to move the page with your finger, but it’s not efficient.  In fact, I challenge you to load this article up on your phone and tell me how many swipes it takes to read it entirely.  But what if I was using a phone that had a Blackberry-ish control wheel instead?  I could keep my thumb on the wheel and read the entire article, moving my thumb only slightly to scroll the page.  Compare that to the touch screen, which requires me to move my finger across the screen and obstruct the page I’m trying to view.  Maybe I’m a closet kinesiologist or something, but I think technology improvements should result in fewer mechanical movements.  The problem is, the touch screen is a wide-open canvas where buttons can be anywhere.  With fixed controls, developers had constraints, and creative developers would think of the best way to leverage those controls.  Sure, developers may get more efficient, but you will still end up making more movements with a touch screen.

A touch is a touch.  I was on a call the other day when I accidentally muted myself.  Why?  Because my ear inadvertently touched the mute button on the screen.  As long as whatever is touching the screen has capacitance, a touch is a touch.  If a charge is sensed, the screen will respond, which causes a lack of precision.  What you intend to press the ‘V’ key but your capacitance was sensed first around the ‘B’ key?  You’ll get a ‘B'.’  Some of this has to do with design, as the Full QWERTY keypad on the Touch Diamond is a little more cramped than the keypad on the iPhone.  In fact, I typically just use the Compact QWERTY keypad as the buttons are bigger and it allows for easier one-handed use.  But regardless of the button layout, typing on a touch screen is a little harder and more error-prone than typing on a real keypad.  This could change somewhat as the technology improves.  For example, pressure sensitivity could reduce the number of errors or miss-touches.  Also, an infrared light could lock the screen when it is obstructed, such as when in your pocket or next to your head during a call.  The Samsung Omnia uses an infrared light to silence the phone when it is placed screen-side down.  But even with these improvements, typing will be a more deliberate effort on a touch screen versus a physical keypad.

The above examples are just a little food for thought to challenge the way we gauge technological advancements.  I mean, touch screens are so sleek, sexy, and downright cool that they must be better than their clunky physical counterparts…but are they?  What do you think?

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