Though they already seem ubiquitous, capacitive touch screens remain a growth market with endless new applications for them on the horizon. As common as they’ve become in our pockets, in stores, and at work, there’s still plenty of news in the touch screen world and if you’re an OEM or systems integrator that implements touch screen technology, you should stay on top of industry developments.

Nintendo’s Big Move

Gaming has been a big adopters of touch screens, but early in 2017 gaming giant Nintendo proved that there are still plenty of changes on the horizon for consumer touch screen products. With the launch of the new Nintendo Switch, a handheld gaming console, they’ve made the move from a resistive touch screen to capacitive, allowing for multi-touch use and generally a much smoother interface. Capacitive touch screens respond to the electrical charges of human touch, whereas resistive requires more force; think of the difference between a tablet and a handheld device used by couriers for collecting signatures.

Touch Screens in Automotive 

As big industry players like Ford have introduced touch screens into car design, responsible for controlling features like the radio, heat, AC, and airflow, there’s been a notable backlash from drivers who say that they’re distracting. One of the issues with touch screen is that they require your eyes, distracting drivers from keeping their eyes on the road and posing a serious safety risk. However, most auto industry experts agree that the change in your dashboard controls is inevitable and that analogue buttons are slowly on their way out. UI designs such as Matt Krenn’s interface featured on Wired anticipates the way that drivers control their radio and AC by feel, offering hope that the touch screen revolution can continue despite backlash in the automotive industry. Drivers like analogue buttons because they can feel their way around them; Krenn’s design allows users a similarly intuitive approach, abandoning the skeuemorphic “menu” for an interface that changes function depending on how many fingers you use. Moving two fingers up or down changes volume, three adjusts the station, and four changes the temperature, etc.

PCAP Touch Screen Manufacturers

Touch screens are part of a delicate technological ecosystem – they’re where software designs meet hardware and in order to be effective have to be engineered with the end user in mind. Your product works best when your touch screen manufacturer works with you from the beginning of the design phase. To learn more about how a touch screen manufacturer can work with your company through design, engineering, and implementation, learn about A D Metro, their projected capacitive touch screens, and how they work with their partners. One of the unique features they offer is the use of common controllers for a range of PCAP touch screen sizes, a simple solution to design time and costs as well as inventory. The PCAP touch screen from A D Metro brings economy to high-end functions in applications such as all-in-one PCs, ATMs, control panels, digital signage, gaming machines, PoS terminals, monitors and more.

PCAP touch screens are not always the most effective solution, whether it’s because the application will be used in conditions where it gets wet or in environments with high levels of radio or electrical interference, or because the application will have to endure tough conditions in a warehouse or industrial environment. For those applications, resistive touch screens may be the way to go. Consulting with a touch screen supplier like A D Metro during the design and engineering of your product is the best way to create a product that will suit your end users. Bringing the touch screen supplier on board for the design process will reduce product defects and deliver a higher quality product in the end.