What, Exactly, is a Stylus?

S

Scott Free

Joined
Sep 15, 1999
Messages
3,319
I recently purchased an iPhone app that (I think) could be better used with a stylus instead of a fingertip. So I bought a cheap stylus from dealextreme. It didn't work with my iPhone. Today I borrowed a friend's stylus, and it wouldn't work either. I've seen styluses on ebay, and at least some of them seem to be specific to certain phones. To me, they just look like tiny pencil-shaped pieces of plastic, but apparently I'm wrong. So now I'm curious... What makes a stylus a stylus, and what would make a given stylus specific to a given phone? :confused:
 
The screen on your iPhone is capacitive, meaning it reacts with the charge in your finger. In order for the stylus to work on this type of screen, it needs to carry the current of your body to the screen. Regular plastic wont do that. You can buy a stylus that does this, or you can go on YouTube to find out how to make one cheap. Sollutions range from using capacitive foam to a wet Q-tip wrapped in foil. My advice would be to get better with your finger or use an app like Swiftkey.
 
All the styluses I have seen are kind of fat, with overly squishy rubber tips. I would love one that offers more precision than my finger, and not less.
 
Me too, Rat. I have several art/drawing programs for my iPad, and using a stylus is pretty much necessary. You can adjust the width of the line you draw, but you're still using a stubby, chunky tool.
I don't see why they can't make a capacitive device with a finer point...
 
Look up the Adonit Jot Pro. I think it's probably the finest tip, although they get around the problem of capacitance in a unique way. Just looks a little fragile for someone like me. I'll stick with my fingers.
 
This would be a good excuse to get a Fellhoelter TiBolt Pen. It comes with a stylus tip.

Cheers.
 
There are two ways to make a touch-sensitive screen: resistive and capacitive.

Resistive is less expensive and easier to do from an engineering perspective. It works well with stylus tools. It works for people wearing gloves. It works for prosthetic fingers. And it can detect and respond to differing pressure which is especially interesting for signature pads and drawing. What it can't do is multi-touch gestures such as when you use two fingers to zoom in or out.

Capacitive is technically more difficult to implement and get to work well. It won't work with just any stylus; you need a special stylus. It won't work with gloves on except special gloves with special material on the fingertips. It has ADA concerns because it won't work with many prosthetic fingers. But, it has thee big advantages: first, it puts the sensor elements under the glass instead of on-top of the glass so it can be more durable. The sensor itself is much thinner so more optically-clear. And, most significantly, it can do multi-touch.

Most tablets and smart phones use capacitive touch.
 
It was my understanding that initial forays into the realm of a stylus with earlier capacitive screens the input size was specifically set at a certain point, which was about a quarter inch big, hence all the larger tipped styli out there. If I remember correctly it was only recently that they were either able or willing to change the size of input or make it accept multiple sizes of input to allow the use of a more classically shaped stylus, similar to what old Palm users had available. The Samsung Note and the Samsung Note II I believe are some of the only devices that allow a finer tipped stylus (again, if I remember correctly).

I could be completely off base and wrong with all of this by the way, but it explained the ridiculously large size of most styli back when I was hoping to continue the use of one after Palm have given up the ghost. The idea (as I recall reading it) was to have the input match the size of a fingertip and only allow something of that size to prevent other body parts from triggering the touchscreen, like your ear during a call.
 
Gollnick said:
There are two ways to make a touch-sensitive screen: resistive and capacitive....
Click to expand...

As I was writing the text of my post, I was 100% confident that sooner or later, Gollnick would eventually chime in will a helpful and knowledgable answer! (Not that the rest of you weren't equally knowledgable and helpful.) :)

Thanks!
 
Gollnick said:
There are two ways to make a touch-sensitive screen: resistive and capacitive.

Resistive is less expensive and easier to do from an engineering perspective. It works well with stylus tools. It works for people wearing gloves. It works for prosthetic fingers. And it can detect and respond to differing pressure which is especially interesting for signature pads and drawing. What it can't do is multi-touch gestures such as when you use two fingers to zoom in or out.

Capacitive is technically more difficult to implement and get to work well. It won't work with just any stylus; you need a special stylus. It won't work with gloves on except special gloves with special material on the fingertips. It has ADA concerns because it won't work with many prosthetic fingers. But, it has thee big advantages: first, it puts the sensor elements under the glass instead of on-top of the glass so it can be more durable. The sensor itself is much thinner so more optically-clear. And, most significantly, it can do multi-touch.

Most tablets and smart phones use capacitive touch.
Click to expand...


While this binary explanation makes sens technically, I dont understand why I can use my phone (samsung epic) with gloves, pencil, pretty much anything, and multi gesture for zoom. Could minute amounts of static created between whatever surface and the screen protector be enough to allow control? Oh, and I do manage to do things on my phone while it is in my pocket or to my ear.


-Xander
 
I looked up the reviews of the Adonit....Boy, they were bad. Plastic tip fell off, tip scratched the glass surface... Most all the reviews were negative.
Most of the art programs have some clever ways around the problem... Of course you can adjust the width of the brush stroke or line stroke of whatever you're using. You can also "offset" the point where the line is drawn from the stylus itself. A little cross-hair appears on the screen where the line will actually appear, rather than under your stylus.
 
The reason that capacitive styluses are the size they are is because the noise the screen receives from the environment would make it unusable without a clearly defined shape and size of input. The screen is gridded, and picks up the location of your finger as a concentration of energy on the grid, which corresponds to a physical location on a screen below it. Anything below the size is regarded as noise and ignored. As far as actual styluses in production, the best one Ive come across is the Pogo, by tenonedesigns. Rather than the rubber ball found on most (which tends to rip after a while) it uses a nub of capacitive foam that is more durable and slides on the screen much better. I think its around $10.
 
Hy people!
I had a problem too, with sweaty fingers :) but after searching google and 1 day's work :)) i found this phone stylus, and now i'm all good, no more problems, btw i have a samsung galaxy III
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top