Capacitive screens test round 1 – iPhone, HTC Droid Eris, Motorola Milestone and Google Nexus One

Now you know having a capacitive touchscreen is cool but have you ever wondered which one is the coolest of them non-stylus lot? MOTO developed very simple and yet effective test for comparing different capacitive touchscreens. The first four handsets to be tested are four of the top-end smartphones available on the market – iPhone, HTC Droid Eris, Motorola Milestone and Google Nexus One.
The test is rather simple – drawing lines on the screen with a finger – the first time barely touching the screen and applying some force on the second go. Now there are several outside factors that can affect the performance of each device (moisture of the finger or how steady the hand of the tester is to name the two most obvious) but hopefully the guys from MOTO took them into consideration and did their best so the test remains as objective as possible.


The results are here for everyone to see – the iPhone gives the most accurate response to touch in the center but has some problems around the edges. The Milestone scored worst of the four, with quite a lot of inaccuracies all over the screen. Unsurprisingly the HTC-manufactured Nexus One and Droid Eris perform identically – fairly linear tracks with some waviness.
The main reason why people prefer the capacitive technology is that only a gentle touch is required for a click to be registered. Yet the accuracy is also quite important when dealing with smaller UI elements, so it’s good to know that when all comes to the screen there will be an easy tool for comparing and choosing the best.
Here is a video of the actual test:

And just to be clear, MOTO have nothing in common with Motorola. You can find the full test article and explanations here.