iPhone, G1 Touch Screens Won't Catch OniPhone, G1 Touch Screens Won't Catch On

One of the appeals of the commercially successful iPhone 3G is due to the capacitive touch screen, which enables the multitouch interface, like pinching to zoom in on a photo or Web site.

But a new report from ABI Research, titled "Touch Screens In Mobile Devices," said this type of screen is not likely to be found in the majority of touch-screen smartphones in the future because of cost and integration issues.

"The reality is that existing operating systems, legacy applications, and regional aspirations make the change to capacitive screens for many devices very challenging," said ABI director Kevin Burden in a statement.

Conventional touch screens work by responding to physical tapping and movement, but capacitive screens operate by the responding to the electricity in the user's finger. This can lead to innovative input methods like on the T-Mobile G1, but established operating systems such as BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile don't lend themselves well to this navigation, ABI said.

One major issue is that the many of the established operating systems have a long line of applications that rely on five-way navigation, keypad, or stylus input. Moving to capacitive screens would bring up many backward-compatibility issues, ABI said.

Another major reason capacitive touch screens may not catch on is the inability to support handwriting recognition. This is a major draw primarily in the Asian markets, where it may be nearly impossible to fit their alphabets on a standard-size handset.

"Capacitive screens will continue to make inroads into high-end models, but with the overall market volume still primarily in midrange devices, the resistive screens in devices in this tier will continue to keep resistive technology far ahead of capacitive," Burden said.