Why Does The iPhone Still Have The Best Touchscreen In The Industry?

Rather than the physical hardware of the touchscreen accuracy, nobody seems to be commenting on the software accuracy and, more importantly, latency.

Android is much less responsive (yes, even on my Nexus One) than any iPhone model. This is not something people tend to measure, but it matters more than I can tell you. When your only feedback from the device consists of visual cues, it's really important to get them to the user as fast as possible. When the lag time between touch<->visual response is long, you end up performing everything more slowly overall, and the feeling of 'sluggishness' of the device increases, even if it really is doing things faster.

For example, my Nexus One can scroll and render a web page faster than my iPhone 3GS, but in my informal tests, it lags nearly 3x over iPhone when responding to actually moving the page with your finger (iPhone is less than 100ms, Nexus One/Android 2.1 usually over a third of a second by my crappy measurements, don't take it as hard fact. Try it yourself!) As a result, the Nexus One feels like more of a PITA to use, and I am subtly more frustrated when performing any task in the OS in any app.

This stuff adds up. Google needs to pay attention. Normal users cannot even tell you what is wrong when it comes to something like this -- a focus group or study will not help. People cannot tell you "oh, the touch sensing was too latent, so my actions were slowed and I was more frustrated while operating the device." They will just be frustrated in some other way that you cannot correlate to touch latency, or they will say nothing, because the problem is not something they can articulate.

The first OS update for my Nexus One added a bug where the desktop wallpaper becomes misaligned when you return to the home screen after launching an app from anywhere but the center home screen. After doing so, when you touch to begin swiping to another home screen, the wallpaper jumps into the correct place by several hundred pixels. Very jarring. This happens every single time, and it wasn't present in the version that was on the phone when I took it out of the box. How did nobody at Google see this before they released the update? Do they not have humans testing the software they're working on?

When you drag down the notification panel from the top of the screen, the bar jumps by about 30-50px every time when initially pulling it out with your finger. Every time.

I want Android to be successful. Please, Google, pay attention to this stuff.

I understand that the article is purely about touch screens...but...

"I exhort all them to get their collective shit together and make something that doesn’t fail miserably when compared to retired hardware."

Nexus One doesn't fail...No...It doesn't. I think the screen overall is much better than the iPhone's. Period. Furthermore, I find almost everything else on the Nexus One is better than almost everything on the iPhone. Meh.

"I laugh at AT&T issues, mock iPhone users for lacking features I have on Android, and so on"

So. We are down a feature. We still win overall..right?...We clearly DO! have our shit together yo' !

I assume that this is a "comparison chart" issue. Consumers and review sites just look for things that can be compared with a checkbox, and that's what the hardware manufacturers pander to. "Touchscreen accuracy" is not a well-defined measurement like "number of megapixels", "screen brightness", "has hardware keyboard", "weight", "amount of RAM", "supported H.264 profiles", etc. When you are trying to optimize the things people that are going to use to determine whether or not to buy your widget, why worry about something nobody will notice?

(Now that someone's noticed, this may change.)

Good question, but skip the article because the author doesn't know the answer.

because apple didn't developed their technology in a stretch deadline, they took their time perfectioning it... all others, just worked hard for a couple months to take on apple's innovation...

You're doing it wrong!

Way to only compare the iPhone to crappy Android based devices that are known for their horrible touch.

The Nokia n900 has superior touch accuracy and resolution, as well as having a stylus to give even more power. Who needs zooming when you can click on any link? If you're too weak to put slight pressure on the screen, there's always the Zune HD, which not only has excellent responsiveness, but has a smoother, richer interface.

I think Touchscreens are probably a software issue. Not sure how they work, but I would expect a classic machine learning problem for determining the location of a touch.

Therefore I think they will get better with subsequent software updates. The iPhone just has seen more time dedicated to the problem already.

Anyway I am doing fine with my Nexus. Never tried to draw a straight line, don't expect the need to arise anytime soon.

As for straight lines, it makes me think that probably one could add all sorts of heuristics. Not only the current touch, but also the context (what is the user most likely trying to do).

I remember a few years back when you would argue and reiterate arguments over which browser/ OS/ gaming console was better. None of those arguments mattered. It was just a giant waste of time (Unless you could convince someone to switch; yeah right!)

I don't even know why I read this article - I figured it would investigate the aspects as to why the iPhone's screen is _theoretically_ the best. Or prove that it is the best, but with facts, not opinion.

I didn't read one fact; just saw a piocture of a unicorn with an iPhone as a horn. What a waste of time.

What kind of facts can we look up to actually figure out if this is a hardware or a software comparison? I think it's in the software.

I downloaded a free, crappy drawing program on my nexus one and drew lines line they have in this article, and they weren't squiggly at all. I call shenanigans.

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1128107