I was wondering that, the screen will only work then you use a finger. but not when you use any other object.
the screen only registers your finger through a transfer of electrons. Your finger transfers them to the screen. Some stylus' work but they have to be specially made for iphone, because somehow the makers make them transfer electrons. More info:http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/iphone1.htm
The other thing is that the screen is made of glass, not plastic. Plastic is less thick, and can register smaller presses, like a stylus.
This will get a little complicated, and some of the smaller details may not be completely accurate, but... The touch part of the screen is made up of a web of extremely flexible and strong atoms flowing over the LCD. This is a positively charged web, and the web stretches upward toward the touch when your negatively charged finger/hand/body part comes in contact with the glass. The glass acts to prevent unintentional touches, as the silicon in the glass acts as a semiconductor, to prevent things such as the air, dust, and other things that may be negatively charged from interacting with the screen. Normal capacitive screens have this same web, but they are designed to break with every touch, which is what give the iPhone multitouch, and other phones, not. Apple had to engineer the iPhone to do this, and patented it, which is why we don't have other multitouch phones. A stylus doesn't have the surface area or the charge needed to interact with it, which means that iPhone styli, have to either transfer our charge through the shaft, or create static to use. Pogo Styli, for example, use the tip, and the aluminum shaft to make a slight charge to use on the screen. Sorry if that was a little complicated, but that is how it supposedly works.
Wow. May I ask how you found out about that? That sounds pretty cool and I never knew that's how the touchscreen worked. I just figured it was magic or something. LOL I think you could just stick to believing it's magic like I did. hah
Using finger is okay, but I hate seeing the fingerprint smudges on the screen after using it for a while.
I don't think I can put that in English Hey, what ever works. I researched a bit, and I have a "friend" who know a bit too much about various computer tech. He explained it, and I'm just passing it on. I warned you beforehand. That's your fault.
Most touch screens are resistive. Think of a grid of sensors, and if you put a conductive object between two (or more) of them it registers a touch. The sensors in the iPhone are capacitive rather than resistive. Think of two objects, each having an electric charge but not touching (one of these is your finger, the other is the sensor behind the glass). These charged objects have an electric field, and when they become close together (such as when your finger touches the glass), their electric fields affect each other. This effect is measured and, if strong enough, is considered a touch. The reason that other objects don't work is that they either have the wrong type of charge or are not charged at all.
Thats a simpler way to put it. I figured that a resistive reference would only confuse them more. Same idea, just stated differently.
Extremely interesting, I had been wondering why it registered touch so well, a frie d of mines toldme it was body heat that was registered but I knew his dumbsss was just lying. Kudos to Apple for developing this technology
