Smartphone touch-screen test puts the iPhone ahead

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MOTO Labs has published the results of an interesting test that shows the difference in accuracy and sensitivity between the touch-sensitive displays on a handful of leading smartphones.

The test involved slowly drawing diagonal lines across the screen with a fingertip in a drawing app and MOTO Labs (no relation to Motorola) tried four smartphones — the Apple iPhone, HTC Droid Eris, Motorola Droid (Milestone in the UK) and Google Nexus One. All use capacitive touch-screens, but not all use multi-touch (which wasn’t part of the test, anyway).

MOTO Labs performed two tests — one with light finger pressure and one with medium finger pressure. Accurate tracking of a slow-moving contact point is much more difficult than a fast moving one, which is why it’s easier to draw a straight line with a mouse in a drawing application by moving it quickly. Applying light pressure to a touch-screen makes tracking harder still, since the screen must be sensitive enough to detect the feather-light touch of a fingertip.

The MOTO Labs results photo shows screen on the four phones for both tests — straight lines area sign of an accurate, sensitive touch-screen, while wavy lines are not.

The iPhone came out on top in both tests, although wavy lines at the screen edges indicate that the display’s sensitivity isn’t uniform across its entire expanse. The other three smartphones didn’t fare quite so well, with light finger pressure confusing all of them into producing wriggly lines.

If it seems like a silly test, it’s worth bearing in mind that accuracy and sensitivity are of utmost importance for a small touch-screen that’s designed to be used with a finger. Clicking links on a web page that’s viewed full size, for example, can mean aiming for an area that’s just a few pixels across and having to zoom into a page before you can accurately click its ‘Next’ button makes for a poor user experience.

[Moto Labs]