What are the pros and cons of touch screen cell phones?

Pros of Using Touchscreens

Situation-Specific Controls - When you consider conventional cell phones, you're pretty restricted with how you go about controlling the different aspects of the handset. When you make use of a touchscreen, the display can adapt fully to the current situation. If you're playing music, you have no need for a QWERTY keyboard. If you're typing up an email, you don't need camera controls. The touchscreen is wholly organic and can easily adapt to the current application. In this way, you have a virtually unlimited number of "buttons" at your disposal.

Freedom of Movement - This is related to the previous point and will require a little bit of software development, but the idea is that any portion of the display can be "moved" to suit the specific user. For example, while many people prefer a virtual QWERTY keyboard, others may prefer if the letters were laid out in alphabetical order. The touchscreen also makes it easy to reorganize the icons in your home menu.

Reduced Physical Size - Because the display also serves as the primary point of control, touchscreen phones can offer a significantly reduced size compared to some of its counterparts. At the same time, you can get access to a much larger display. Can you imagine if the iPhone maintained the same size screen but added a BlackBerry-style keyboard underneath? It would be pretty huge. Compared to slider phones like the TyTN II and Samsung Glyde, handsets like the HTC Touch Diamond and LG Vu are several grades smaller.

Cons of Touchscreen Cell Phones

No Tactile Feedback - There's just something to be said about hitting a physical button. For the life of me, I just can't type as fast on something like the Samsung Instinct or Apple iPhone as I can on something with a physical QWERTY keyboard like the LG enV2 or HTC Touch Pro. I also find that it's a lot easier dialing on a conventional numeric keypad than it is on a virtual keypad. Some handsets have tried to rectify this with haptic feedback, but it's just not the same.

Have to Look to Touch - Yes, you probably shouldn't be dialing and text messaging while driving, but it's inevitable that people still want to do this. When you have a phone with a regular keypad, it's possible to "feel" where the buttons are and to press them without looking. With a touchscreen phone, this is virtually impossible and can drastically increase the possibility of a bad motor vehicle accident.

Sensitivity and Response - When you press a button a regular phone, you know you pressed it. There's no calibration, no mistakes. When you press a virtual button on a touchscreen phone, it's not nearly as perfect. Again, haptic feedback can aid in this department, but it's not on par just yet. The iPhone has good response, but I found that other touchscreens don't respond quite as well. That's because most devices make use of the cheaper resistive touchscreens and the iPhone has the more expensive capacitive touchscreen. You can read this article for an explanation of the difference in technology.

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I have a touch screen phone and for the most part, I love it. It can get annoying when it goes to a different thing than what you pressed, which will happen but I get used to it. Other annoying things are that the screen gets finger prints all over it pretty quickly so you have to keep cleaning it. And just like most people said, sometimes it will randomy call people. I took mine out of my pocket once and it was in my address book. It's kinda creepy haha. But yeah, for the most part I love my phone.

I have a touchscreen phone and personally i like it, however it also annoys the hell out of me lol. To start with:

1)Theyre usually not the smallest of phones .

2)The menus are a pain to navigate unless it has a stylus

3)The screen gets grubby quickly, and requires constant cleaning

4)Hanging up during a call is a nightmare, the phones automatically lock otherwise your ear would be pressing all kinds of buttons, when you want to hang up a call you usually have to mess about pressing various things first

At the end of the day it's down to personal taste, if you really like the look of a touchscreen then get one, if you really dont get on with it then you can always sell it and buy a different phone =]

I have a touch screen. I think a con would have to be that I have to wipe the screen off a lot to keep it clean. Other than that I don't think there are any major cons. Pros are that they are pretty cool. Haha. Just depends on the person and what they want.

PROS

Faster interface browsing, better typing and potentially fun games.

CONS

Smudges, scratches, can break easier than a direction pad, hard to use if you have large fingers.

Personally I don't think the added cost is worth it just to grease up and damage the screen.

Con: its hard to see your screen when your in the light. but i love my touch screen

Pros: they're shiny and quite cute.

Cons: they call people without you even realizing. Plus, they take time to get used to.

:]

they sound cool but aren't good. they scratch,break,crack,& freeze up

i don't recommend it to you especially if you drop things easily or you have annoying siblings that break stuff. hope this helps..good luck!

I have the LG Viewty and it's so awesome.

I really recommend getting one.