Droid Touchscreen Less Accurate Than iPhone's 198
gyrogeerloose writes "A test published by MOTO labs comparing the accuracy and sensitivity of smartphone touchscreens among various makers gave the iPhone top marks ahead of HTC's Droid Eris, the Google-branded Nexus One and the Motorola Droid. The test was conducted within a drawing program using a finger to trace straight diagonal lines across the screens and then comparing the results. While it's not likely that a smart phone user is going to draw a lot of lines, the test does give some indication of which phones are most likely to properly respond to clicking on a link in a Web browser."
Well of course drawing lines is important (Score:0, Insightful)
If you can't even draw a straight line, or the line is offset by a certain amount of pixels, the user is going to have a hell of a time clicking on links, presings tiny buttons, typing with an on-screen keyboard, etc, so not only would he have problems actually "drawing a picture" with his finger. This was actually a very good test.
I own an iPhone, and I can draw complex images with my finger, scrult a 3D sculpture with a particular program I have, and accurately type and click. I have nothing to compare it to but i know how accurate the iPhone is.
Re:What generation of Iphone is being compared her (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What generation of Iphone is being compared her (Score:5, Insightful)
It's perfectly fair if that "3rd generation" product came out half a year before "disadvantaged" contenders.
BTW, why only big touchscreen devices? There were supposed to be, y'know, cheap ones with Android by now.
Re:What generation of Iphone is being compared her (Score:2, Insightful)
How would it NOT be fair to compare current phones to current phones?
I think future generations of the iPhone will make my [noun] [adjective]. Should we just go ahead and say it's a feature today?
Re:What generation of Iphone is being compared her (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it is fair. This is only information. A consumer only cares about how the current product works.
Maybe, maybe not. (Score:2, Insightful)
While it's not likely that a smart phone user is going to draw a lot of lines, the test does give some indication of which phones are most likely to properly respond to clicking on a link in a Web browser."
A "gaming-grade" mouse and surface might have better sensitivity but I won't likely see a difference in browsing.
Re:Used "a program" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
"These aren't the results I wanted to see, therefore the methodology is flawed!"
Their conclusion is illogical. (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't follow that a lack of accuracy from dragging in a painting app would affect click accuracy in a browser at all. For example, the accuracy could degrade the longer you hold your finger to the screen due to moisture building up on your fingertip or due to reduced capacitance as the blood flow is restricted.
If you want to test point accuracy then write an app to test that; don't test something completely different and then leap to a potentially inaccurate conclusion.
Re:What generation of Iphone is being compared her (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it fair to compare the third generation of a product to new products out there right away ?
Fairess isn't an issue. Consumers are presented with various options today. They need to compare them today. We don't have to be worried about hurting the poor phones' (or manufacturers') feelings with the unfairness of it all.
Re:What's important (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Used "a program" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What generation of Iphone is being compared her (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that diagonal lines aren't that bad of a test actually. Just hitting links doesn't seem as good of a test, because the line test is more generalized. FTA:
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.
From this, it looks like the line test actually does a good job of determining how accurate the touch screen is going to be overall.
You can still say the person drawing the lines is inconsistent, but I'd say that's not a big deal, considering it's just an online article.
Ah, groupthink (Score:5, Insightful)
If you spent five minutes looking at this outfit's methodology you'd realize that the test is sound, though perhaps a little exacting compared to real-world use cases. But what I love is that the first twenty posts or so basically all offered apologies for the Android phones and denigrated the significance of the test. They couldn't be better PR responses if Google and Motorola had drafted them. If you happen to use and like an Android device, why don't you just admit that it has a flaw and deal with it? God knows it probably isn't going to affect you under most usual circumstances.
I can't tell you for how long I was and still am pissed off about various missing features on the iPhone (auto-SMS, copy/paste, etc.) but I still like the device overall and use it. You don't have to hold this borderline view of the world in which computing devices are either God's work on Earth or Satan's playthings.
Silly test results... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This has nearly nothing to do with click qualit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah, groupthink (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking the exact same thing, and if the results had been reversed and the Droid had been on top, we'd have had a flurry of posts talking about how the iPhone is an overpriced and inferior option.
I also have issues with my iPhone (lack of built in MMS initially, lack of cut and paste until recently, annoyance that you still can't sync up your ToDo items from iCal with the built in calendar app and have to rely on third party apps, annoyance that you have to manually disable wifi if are trying to use 3G in an area with a hotspot, where it will try to use that wifi, even if you don't have a password for it, or its one of those web login ones).
What's wrong with saying "the droid's touch sensitivity is less effective than I'd like"? It seems like droid users are just as zealous about their phones as they accuse iPhone users of being.
Re:Maybe, maybe not. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think your comparison is a little off. If you look at the differences between these devices I would say it's closer to comparing a modern optical mouse to an old ball mouse. From my experience there is absolutely a difference between those two devices when browsing the internet or performing any other precise task. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but I always though "gaming-grade" mouse and surfaces were akin to putting v-tech stickers on the side of your car.
Re:Ah, groupthink (Score:3, Insightful)
One human drags his finger around a few touch screen cell phones and starts making what appears to be "statements of fact" about the quality and accuracy of those phones. Excuse me if I don't consider the results to be rigorous.
Look at how loaded the headline is. It definitely deserves to be here on slashdot, that's for sure. Go look for topics where the Droid beats the iPhone and you see the exact opposite in effect; people offering apologies for the iPhone or denigrating, etc.
The guy in the linked article goes on about the quality of the construction of the touch screen. Since he's feeling ambitious, he should try the scratch test, to see how easy it is to scratch the various screens. I remember reading that Moto put a lot of money into making a quality screen that is very difficult to scratch...I wonder if that screen is partially responsible for the wavy lines. But due to lack of rigor, I don't think we'll know...
Re:So, restricted to capacitive screens (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is resistive screens do "accuracy", capacitive screens do "responsive" and "multi touch".
They're testing screens for accuracy and they only look at machines with capacitative screens.
The iPhone has multi-touch, it beats the pants of the N900 for "responsiveness", but it's nowhere near as accurate.
Welcome to the world of the API (Score:5, Insightful)
Was the program written to the same quality in all platforms?
It's a DRAWING PROGRAM.
As in, they take in whatever pixel input the system gives them and spit them out on the screen. "Quality" does not enter into it, because they are all using the same API's that just have the OS feed them a stream of points.
It's representative of the quality of touch accuracy you will have in other apps because they, too, will just look at what points the OS is presenting the user as having touched.
Re:What would be intersesting to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be very true if touchscreens were purely a point-and-click (or aim-and-stab) input control. However, what Apple has tried to do with the iPhone (and the recent "Magic Mouse" is indicative of this trend) is to create a new human-device interface mechanism that depends more on natural and intuitive gestures than aiming and stabbing a specific screen area. Because of this, the ability to track finger movements consistently and accurately is very important.
If, on the other hand, your user interface depends on a literal translation of a desktop point-and-click GUI, designed to be used primarily with a mouse and keyboard, to a touchscreen input control; then, of course, consistent and accurate tracking is less important than detecting the precise region where pressure was applied at a specific time. But if that is the case, the problems are deeper than just accuracy.
-dZ.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a Droid user, I think I can answer this.
In order to unlock the screen, you can use a gesture to unlock it. About 75% of the time, it works fine but the remainder of the time the gesture is not recorded correctly. There's a few games (word search) that often have issues marking an entire word.
Only owning an iPod Touch, it's hard for me to do a side-by-side comparison since I don't do the same things with the droid as I do the touch. All that aside, I love the Droid.
I'm also a Droid user. I rarely have issues with the lock screen. The impression I've had is those times that I do, it's because I was trying to do some one-handed thumb swipe or slashing at the screen. I'll have to pay closer attention but I would have a hard time at this point thinking that this test has much practical application to my experience. Of course, I also do not use an iPhone or other Android phone so I have nothing to compare to.
I do, however, miss the curved unlock widget. I prefer it over the newer, current linear one.
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Android keyboard was marginal. The HTC keyboard was better.
And yet, they are both infinitly better than the iPhone's keyboard.
Sorry, I am feeling snarky this morning...
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems the iPhone has some real competition. Finally.
This is it, really. Regardless of which someware development model a person loves, or phone manufacuring corporation, or internet search company, hardware vendor, or whatever else, there is starting to be some proper competition in the consumer oriented smartphone market.
I've had an iphone since shortly after they were launched. While there were things to complain about it was still the best smarthophone I'd ever used, overall. The longer I use it the longer the list of complaints I have, many of which are addressed elsewhere. Better maps, better contact management, better photo management, less lag in the OS. Unless Apple comes back over the top on those things soon I know I will switch.
And then you have ATT. I don't see how Apple can continue with the exclusivity. ATT is the best carrier for the area where I live but the worst almost everywhere I travel. That and the fact that we finally have the long promised always on internet devices right here in our pockets and the whole thing is being monumentally screwed up by a company complaining that people are using too much of their always on internet. Someone is going to make a mountain of money off this but it isn't going to be ATT. It won't be Apple either, unless they untie themselves from that boat anchor.
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, why does it take companies who aren't cell-phone manufacturers to design great ones?
Heh. That's an easy one. Phone manufacturers and "phone companies" are still managed by people who think a real phone is a big black thing that sits on a table and has a rotary dial. They don't have one on their desk, of course, because their personal secretary handles that for them. They may have heard about the newfangled portable phones (most likely if they're managing a cell-phone company ;-), but they've never touched one. But they do give orders to people who are designing the latest phones (and their software).
Wish I were joking. But then, it's nearly as bad in the computer industry, where most of top management hasn't heard that the best-selling computers now are little things that fit in your pocket. To them, a computer is a metal cabinet that's taller than they are. Most of them have heard of those minicomputers and desktop computers, but have never touched one. They haven't heard that those are a dying breed, rapidly being replaced by variously-sized portable computers.
No management in either the phone or computer industry has yet heard that their two turfs are right now merging into one.
interpolation (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a DRAWING PROGRAM ... a stream of points.
and you're so sure it doesn't apply interpolation and smoothing algorithms of various sophistication because?..
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Insightful)
You still want the device to work as well as possible on web pages not designed for mobile devices.
With its high resolution, the Droid is getting dangerously close to readability for a full web page ...
I have noticed the problem mentioned in the article. It shows up for me as jerky scrolling. I love how the iPhone always scrolls smoothly and precisely with your finger. No other device has matched that, and I think the problem described in this article is why.
I hope Apple improves iPhone's resolution in the next update, but I'm still loyal to it. I tried my friend's Droid, but iPhone has by far the best interface. It's in small details, but Apple really sweated them amazingly well.
D
Re:Obviously... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not? The phone is with him wherever he goes, so he can work on a picture whenever he's got a few minutes free.