Touchscreens: The Revolution in Mobile Phones

Vol 27, Issue 22, 28th March 2025

Do you remember mobile phones before touchscreens? Old phones with physical keyboards? Do you know where touchscreen technology comes from? And what was the first touchscreen phone?
Today, we are talking about this technology, which has brought a big change to phones, making everything easier and faster. Let’s go.

Touch technology was first invented in 1965 by British engineer E. A. Johnson, who created a touchscreen for the air traffic control system. After that, in 1983, HP became the first company to use touch technology in a laptop.

In the 1990s different people and companies worked on improving this technology. The first touchscreen phone was introduced by Sony Ericsson in 2002. The p800, with a full-colored touchscreen.

After that, Nokia developed touchscreen technology, leading to multi-touch screens on mobile phones. In 2007, Apple introduced its first iPhone, a phone with multi-touch and a full-color screen, which was also the first phone without a physical keyboard.

From there, competition between mobile phone companies started.

After the first versions of touchscreen phones, Samsung launched its Galaxy S series with a capacitive Super AMOLED display. But touchscreens weren’t the only use of this technology. After that Apple introduced fingerprint sensors, a feature now used by most brands and models.

The newest innovation in touchscreen mobile phones came with Samsung’s phones with a flexible touchscreen, which were introduced in 2022.

Different types of touchscreens:

After learning about the history of touchscreen technology and its impact on the mobile phone industry, it is time to explore the different types of touchscreens.

• 1- Capacitive Touchpad: This model is the most common in mobile phones. Uses a grid of capacitive sensors that are sensitive to electrical changes by touching the surface. This model supports a multi-touch screen but doesn’t work with non-conductive materials like gloves.
•  2- resistive touchpad: in this model, there are two conductive layers; when you touch the screen, they stick together and work. Multi-touch doesn’t work in this type, so it is the least common in sensors.
• 3- optical touchpads: working with the help of light-based sensors and used in some devices.
• 4- Force touch: Force touch or haptic feedback touchpad is the newest model of touch sensors, found by Apple and used in some MacBooks. This one is sensitive to pressure and touch time.

Nowadays, touchscreen technology is not only used in mobile phones but also in laptops, tablets, monitors, and other smart devices. It makes everything easier and faster and also helps artists and digital painters improve their work.

How does this technology impact your life?