Not a Dedicated Follower of Fashion - 10 Reasons Why Touchscreens Suck

The main advantage touch-screen phones have is, of course, that they're more fun to play with.

Not recognising this fun factor is clearly why Nokia are being punished in the uninformed public consciousness. You only have to watch the N8 demonstration videos to realise that Nokia is not, as a company, charismatic.

I just wish more companies would build more touch-plus-buttons devices of the N97/Milestone or even Samsung Ultra Touch patterns (why can't Nokia do a dual-slider with a touch screen? Make everybody (un)happy).

The Motorola Backflip, however, we could probably live without.

Will there be S^3 devices without a touchscreen?

I really miss the Dpad on my 5800 when playing games.

Also, when I have to mark multiple files or messages, I really wish there was a pencil key that could click and mark away all the files that I want.

The comment about T9 typing without looking at the phone was dead on. That's one of the reason I still keep my N82 around as my official phone. During a meeting, I simply type and send the messages out while the phone is under the desk away from my eyes.

I am with Steve on this one.

For real power-users the amount of "non-touched" when touched is still far to high.

When something needs to be done I grap the S60v3 on the road instead of the S60v5.

Hoping the N9 will change that, because the N97 didn't.

Have to say I agree with Mr Litchfield on this subject. Back in the day, I had an HTC Universal, which while having an excellent querty keyboard and huge screen, was akin to holding a tea tray against my face when i wanted to make calls! Subsequently, I abandoned touchscreens, and got myself an N80, then N95 classic, and now an N86 8mp, all of which were numeric keypad phones. Recently, I began to wonder if the technology had moved on significantly enough for me to have another shot at touch. My main issue has ALWAYS been that you simply cannot operate these phones FULLY using just one hand, be it texting on the go, or surfing the web in the bath!! However, when my wife got herself a new iphone, I had a chance to once again see if the problems still exsited, and I'm afraid they do! The user interface is pleasing, and the real estate is great for watching videos etc, but for MY use case, namely texting and surfing one-handed, they just don't cut the mustard.

I'll be sticking with my N86 until Nokia or someone else comes up with a numeric keypad slider, with a 3" screen. THEN I'll be really happy! :)

Good article Steve, and just emphasizes my own point of view. There is no right or wrong, no better or worse, just what suits the individual. Only slightly annoying aspect of this touchscreen love-in by the manufacturers is that new non-touch phones at the higher end of the market seem to have been neglected. :mad:

I heartily agree. I have a Samsung i8910 but that's only for play. For the real world, i.e. work, I use a Nokia E72. I guess the crunch factor is the one-handed operation. Plus it just seems so much easier to use with the various short-cut keys, hard and soft.

I haven't own (or used) a touch phone but can a phone with a capasitive screen be used with gloves? It's quite cold in here during winter (and autumn and spring) and if I must take my gloves off before I can even answer the phone it's not something I'd like to do very frequently.

My best phone ever was the E71, but I am sure I will miss the size of the screen of my N97 while watching videos and reading the news, if I get a smaller screen.
But being able to write quickly, with almost no typos and running anything I want without any stability issue, is something I miss of my E71.
Waiting for the N9 or E7. Hope will be my ideal phone, big screen, good sound, supreme stability and a full qwerty keyboard.

I have played with a lot of touch sceen phones (iphone, galaxy spica, n900, HD2, 5800) and I feel that using these phones is really slower than my old N86.

Totally agree with you steve! A N86 with a touch screen would be awesome!

The thing is, a lot of people want a big screen for the media and web viewing. So once you've got that, then the question is, do you want to start adding buttons and size to do all the phone things you talk about in your list? The answer for a lot of people is, no, even though there are trade offs.

I think if you would stop viewing what we talk about as "phones" as phones and accepted that the devices can have other roles that are more important, it would all get clearer...

After some time with E71 and now with 5800 I'm stuck in a middle. Texting at E71 was great, but looking at the web pages through the keyhole-sized screen was not comfortable. On the other hand, pages look nice at 5800, but entering text is not easy. I'm thinking about N97 mini now, but somehow I feel it's not a solution anyway. What to do? :)

How many Blackberrys do you see now in the hands of teens and the fashionable? theere are school kids running around with blackberry's. How did RIM turn a device made for stuffy suits into a must have consumer device?

The point is there is still a market for devices with keyboards, and as i have said on here before chasing the touchscreen buck when your reputation is in tatters and your up against google and apple seems way too optimistic.

If i were the pr guru at Nokia the N9 whatever it is being leaked would be the device i would be pushing as an alternative not another me too device.

What disappoints me most about mobile phone manufacturers is that they're so unimaginative and unadventurous. The last really interesting innovation in design was the dual slider. Everything else has been different ways of doing the same old thing, often with less useful buttons.

A better use of slide controls, such as the scroll-wheel used on older Blackberries and the touch+side-slide QWERTY iMate that's hanging around my office with no visible owner, would make one-handed usage much easier on touch-screen devices, acting as a D-pad replacement without making the device bigger or compromising screen size. But that appears to be ex-technology, and the trackball on Android devices doesn't even seem to work on the home screen (disclaimer - that was from briefly playing with an HTC something today).

Don't get me started on how text input on touch-screens is currently several years behind where it should be - I was using systems on a QTopia-based Sharp Zaurus 7 years ago that are only just being rediscovered by Android developers. News-flash, people: Text prediction and auto-correction in software are not new. Not even remotely.

Mind you, Steve's point about the iPhone having the music player icon at the bottom of each screen does point to another option: Having the controls grouped largely at the bottom of the screen, instead of the desktop-style top of the screen, would also ease one-handed usage. S60v5, with its options and exit buttons at the bottom or right is a step in the right direction here.

The durability and grease-on-screen issues aside, touch-screens could be made a lot more efficient and fast to use if a bit of lateral thinking was used.

agree with the phone-or-toy central plank of argument, but I've never had a phone with a decent keyboard. The e61 and e90 have these dreadful little keys with no travel- I found stabbing with the stylus on my shortlived n5800 better (the screen cracked from the unreasonable use of having it in my pocket with keys).
Like the iPhone on Guardian CiF, AAS threads have to have a Psion mention. My Psion 5 had a fabulous keyboard- the acid test being I never thought about writing something down for speed, it was always the psion that came out for notes, lists etc. That no-one has stuck a phone in a psion is a global catastrophe far worse than any climate change or asteroid impact.

Making "touchscreens suck" statement is an oversimplification. But I assume you wanted to wind us up;)
Most of the problems with touch interfaces, especially S60v5, originate from the fact that they're designed with buttons in mind. This is most apparent in S60v5 with it's flawed single tap / double tap interaction inconsistency.
Things are different when entire UI and interaction model is built from the ground up with touch in mind. This also allows to design the interface so that you can't accidentally do something you didn't want to do - like answering a call when picking up the phone. On mini you have to swipe to answer - it's not that easy to do it accidentally. Of course you can accidentally press touch sensitive green handset button. But that is by no means a flaw of the touch interface. This is an example of a very bad design decision. It seems Nokia noticed that and they got rid of redundant buttons entirely on N8.
Of course touchscreens have their drawbacks. But they're much more than just a passing "fashion". People welcome them because touching is the natural way of interacting with things. When touch interface is properly designed, and responsive it'll boost productivity as it removes the middleman - the keys. You get to interact with interface elements directly. And removes constrains of limited number of buttons and their fixed layout. This is a level of flexibility that (if used cleverly) will make touch interface adapt to the task it's supposed to perform - something physical keyboard driven devices are unable to do. Simple example - iPhones keyboard gives you "next" and "previous" that allow you to jump between input fields.
I believe there are few things in this world that downright "suck" or are only "great". There are great and bad touch devices, just as there are physical keyboards that are slowing down text input and ones that are joy to use. But overall touch offers more flexibility. I believe they will coexist but eventually touch will be dominant with keyboards reserved for specialist devices.

I totally disagreed with Steve. Let's face it, the future of smartphones will be multi-touch devices. Apple pioneered the use of multi-touch in smartphone and now every manufacturer is following this trend. It is not true that single handed operation cannot be used on a multi-touch smartphone. You can also use T9 on a touchphone. It is just a piece of software that you purchase from the App Store. Together with haptic, the T9 function on a multi-touch phone can be as good as those phones with keypad.

I'd been anti touch screen ever since I first saw one and so put off trying one untill I found the N97 , in which I saw the safety net of the qwerty keyboard (which I'm using now) so N97 problems and flaws to one side, I've been converted ! I would never go back to T9 or a small screen . When a solid and reliable replacement arrives I find it the perfect form factor and will stick with it for the foreseeable future . For anyone who hasn't used a touch screen long term ,I thoroughly recommend it ;)

@manual_ Yep, what I wanted to do was get people thinking. I'm utterly fed up by the tech press going doolally over large touchscreen tablets and totally missing all the good things about other form factors.

As you say, every form factor has its advantages, I just wanted to put in a shout for the 'old fashioned', 'obsolete' little-guy - phones with -shock- buttons! 8-)

Sorry, I was fully with touch sucks a few years back using only candy bar phones from Nokia and HTC (with the odd sonye) I moved to HTC tytn and tytn ii which was starting to compete. Now via hd2 and finally HTC desire I can totally say that touch is better than not. It has grown up..

One hand typing is almost as good as keypad/boards. Two hand typing is now way better. One hand web browsing is way better with touch, games I don't play but would agree keys are probably better and yes the phones are bigger (but not so much these days). Rightness operation is pretty much there with swipe down to answer and up to ignore. Locking the screen is habit not via the power button ( as with all smart phones) if only to conserve a little battery life..

Now one hand touch typing is about to go way before a keypad with swype, if you haven't tried you should, its a true significant advance in touch screen typing.

All in all I'd not go back to non touch and give up my desire. I have blackberries and e72 & e5? Which I use from time to time but I now always return to touch..

Matt
( typed on my HTC desire)

Completely agree with you, Steve. I'm personally getting a bit tired of exclusively touch-driven phones, not that I have anything against them but I've been using my E71 a lot more than my HTC Desire lately (i.e I only use the Desire for YouTube or Audible books).
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but my next phone (after the N8, because it's camera negates any bad feelings I have towards exclusively touch driven phones), will probably either be without a touchscreen or at least with a qwerty keyboard.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE IPHONE GUYS, JUST BECAUSE NOKIA CAN'T SPELL TOUCH LET ALONE IMPLEMENT A REASONABLE TOUCH INTERFACE DOESN'T MEAN TOUCH SUCKS!!

Juha.

No, Juha, you appear to have gone sailing right past the points, which included size, one-handed usage, using it without looking fully at the controls, buttons are easier...

Touch is great for navigation through interface but horrible for text input.

After using E70 for many many years (best keyboard in the world) and now switching to iPhone I'm writing about half the number of the SMS in a month and I kid you not they must be at least two to three times shorter that before. Also it's so much harder now just to damn call someone, to much taps/menus compared to S60.

E71 form factor with touch screen would be a killer.

Also, Nokia please find some decent skin/theme artists together with some experts in UI design, S60 could look so much better with just one really good theme.

Sorry dubito I'be not sailed past the point, my point is that the handset developers who understand how to design a touch interface have addressed the vast majority of the points raised. On the other hand symbian / Nokia touch interfaces are way behind in UI design and appeal. If Nokia is going to play in high end handset game (which will ultimately become medium and low) they have to create a completing touch and non touch experience (although good touch only players will also survive).

Nokia is a long way from dead but so was microsoft and the pc in every house vision has been gazumed by a handset in every pocket and they aren't at the table!!!

Juha

i too have Desire, if i want to browse i use the desire, view pictures or watch video desire.

But if i need to reply to mail (which i do 30 times a day) make calls on the street, send sms i pull out the E71, quick easy straight to the point, lasts all day and gets the job done, don't underestimate simplicity.