Differences Between Resistive and Capacitive Touchscreen

How it works?
Resistive touchscreens works by separating two thin layers of sensors with an air gap or microdots, so that when user pushes the layer surface with a stylus, it will bend and touches the other layer, and creating a touch point. This touch point then, is regarded by the device as the user’s selection. User can still pressing resistive touchscreen with bare finger, but the response usually is awkward. This is because technically, it does a great job at detecting pointed touch points, but not a larger touch area which created when a finger pressed the layer surface.

Capacitive touchscreens works in a different way, instead of relying on user to pressing of two separate layers of sensors, it works by sensing a conductivity - the electricity transferring feature that naturally occurs in water-consisted elements, like human fingers. This is why using a regular stylus on capacitive screen won’t work, since the stylus is usually made from plastic which doesn’t have a conductive characteristic.

Which one is better?
At the moment the capacitive technology is more recent technology and many considers as better compared to resistive technology, due to its convenience of operation by using only our own finger and the considerably quick response. The latest capacitive touchscreens are even better with the ability to sense multiple touch areas, which enables the awesome features like pinch and spread to zoom in and zoom out, and also the rotate function. However capacitive touchscreens have bad accuracy and certainly not recommended for precision works.

The resistive touchscreens on the other hand, is able to detect a pin sized touch point and for this reason are better for tasks which requires precision. If you are an experience designer, you can create a specific and tight spacing action areas with resistive touchscreen.