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Resistive touchscreen

A resistive touchscreen is a type of LCD screen that responds to control input from a finger via the application of pressure, in direct contrast to its counterpart the capacitive touchscreen. Resistive touchscreens require pressure to join two thin display layers and complete an electric circuit that tells a cell phone (or other touchscreen device) where the user is touching, while capacitive touchscreens instead have uniform fields of electron energy stored right on the surface of the screen whose disruption indicates finger location. In a resistive device, two sheets of electricity-conducting material are separated by an extremely thin, non-conductive layer of either air or microdots; applying pressure to the top layer closes the circuit and tells the hardware where the finger is pressing.

The amount of pressure a resistive touchscreen requires is highly variable depending on the device; some resistive touchscreens have an action that feels almost like pressing a physical button.

Examples of resistive touchscreen phones:

 

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