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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

Touchscreens are awful on a device that you might want to use in the rain... like a watch.

I have a Garmin sport watch with a touch screen (plus two physical buttons). If you're out in the rain and need to change modes on a run or bike ride, it's nearly impossible, you need to stop, bend over to shield the watch with your body, dry your finger on your shirt (assuming you have a dry spot), then then you can usually use the touchscreen.

Once it's set to the right mode, the 2 physical buttons work well, but anything that requires the touchscreen is nearly impossible without stopping what you're doing.

(at least that's the case with whatever touchscreen technology Garmin uses, maybe there's a better option for use in the rain)

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Or with gloves on. This is one of the reasons why I still use my Garmin GPSMAP 62s with a heart rate sensor when I go for longer bike rides, despite having an Apple Watch (the others being: more detailed maps and being able to 'recharge' the GPS by swapping out two AA batteries).

I commute by bike. I understand I'm not a huge market segment but I love my Pebble Time Steel. I'm definitely not looking for fitness tracking or an obvious fitness watch: who really wants to record every single minute of their _commute_ anyway? I just want a smartwatch that does smartwatch things with zero fuss while outside. I can read it in direct sunlight, interact with it in the snow with heavy gloves, and not worry about it when it's pouring rain.

I bought a spare PTS when FitBit bought Pebble. I was concerned there'd be no replacement when the time came to retire the current watch. So far, I'm unfortunately correct.

Older resistance style touchscreen s would work well here, this is where the capacitance screens fail easily.

I believe resistive screens are also better for battery life, which you'd think would be critical for a watch.

I've found that the touchscreen on my vivoactive works perfectly when wet and in light rain (not under the shower).

However to get it to work it's necessary that some metal part of the watch (either one of the buttons, or the charging contacts underneath) to be touched (either by the wrist, or another finger) while touching the screen.

You must have a different Vivoactive than me, I have the Vivoactive HR with no metal buttons. The charging contacts are on the back and recessed enough that they probably don't contact my wrist.

I have the original 1st gen. vivoactive, the buttons are metal and the charging contacts recess is less than 1mm, so it certainly touches the wrist. You can clearly see the metal button on this picture https://urbanwearables.technology/wp-content/uploads/2016/02...

The thing is, I saw a touch screen attending the "embedded world" embedded technology conference in nuremberg a few years ago...multitouch included. Why is this not more common? Especially for "rugged" devices?

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