With the rash of new “finger-friendly” WinMob apps out there it is easy for we with M$ in our pocket to try going both ways.

My experience is that the Stylus is a more accurate and faster way to input.

HTC can slow sown on the capacitive screen development – if you ask me. I will also be happy to keep my gloves on in winter and just use the stylus.

I agree. I think that both methods of input are important: stylus for accurate input, or for applications that need to take advantage of the complete screen real estate, and finger friendly input for the rest (and majority) of the cases.

On my AT&T 8525 (HTC Hermes), the small screen just about requires a stylus. I can unlock it without one, and do some things with just the buttons/wheels, but the stylus just makes it go a lot faster. Same thing with my old iPaq 2490.

Great comments, guys! While I really don’t like the thumbprints on my screen, I do occassionally use my fingernails to tap something if I am in a hurry. Other times, when I’ve only got one hand free, I tend to opt for VirtuaMouse. Gives me an on screen mouse that I can control with my Hermes’ D-Pad.

I’m pretty much all for the finger now. Err..ok, yeah, I’ll stick with that.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that I really prefer the iPhone/Pre/Android way of doing things. I liked the Stylus a lot, but it was something extra to lose for most people. It also got a little annoying when it happened to be a telescoping one like on the Hermes.

I agree that the screen can get a little smudged up, but that can actually be cleaned very easily with a quick wipe or hidden well by products like InvisibleShield. The cons of having oil smudges don’t outweigh the pros of having a larger UI. I don’t even mind the winter accessibility problems, and I live in Canada!

I have to agree with Thomas on the “telescoping” stylus. I bought 3 of the Staedtler “Mars Data 3″ 3-in-1 pens (ballpoint, pencil, stylus) to carry and use with my various touch-screen devices, especially the Hermes. Works nice on some fussy touch-screen PC-based equipment I have to service as well.

Definitely stylus. I hate hate hate using a finger UI. Sadly, this narrows my choices down to HTC WinMo and maybe a couple of more obscure products. I wish they’d either put android onna resistive-screen device or invent a pointy stylus that works on a capacitive screen. I recently saw an article suggesting HTC was patenting an idea for the latter. Probably too late for me as I need a device before I go travelling in December.

Two days ago I switched from Palm Treo 755p to Pre. I am getting used to finger but miss the accuracy of the stylus. Sometimes trying to hit a link or small button is like playing darts. The thing I *really* miss though is the 4-way rocker. I was blazing fast at switching to what I wanted to do and then center button to take that action. And I could do that easily with one hand.

Given the small display-size of most smartphones ( I cannot wait for Steve Jobs to introduce iFood, the revolutionary way to eat with your fingers, instead of with fork&knive

Given the small display-size of most smartphones (4 inch diagonal), but their high resolution (better than 480×320), it is obvious that their information density (pix/cm^2) cannot be adressed by a thick finger-tip. Only the thin tip of a stylus (or of a ladie’s long finger-nail) can make good use of that information density. A typical example: cut-and-paste of text, starting and ending at a precise character. This is impossible for a finger-tip, since it is unprecise and the finger occludes the view.

This means that capacitive touchscreens, which require an extended surface of the finger to be in contact with the screen to register a “touch”, are not at all appropriate for pocket-sized devices like smartphones when one tries to do more than just viewing information, but tries to actually modify the text/picture/etc. that is shown on the screen.

So far, only resistive touchscreens allow to work with a stylus or a finger-nail. For many users, this is really a more useful feature than being able to zoom with gestures (multi-touch feature of capacitive touchscreens). Zooming can be achieved in many other ways (for ex. by having a zoom-button, etc.). But nothing can replace pointing accuracy. Note that track-balls and other similar poiting-devices are no substitute for the ability to directly point to the screen with high accuracy.

In any case, technology already exists that allows to combine the advantages of capacitive and resistive displays, see for ex.
http://www.stantum.com/ or
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/hitachi-develops-capacitive-touchscreen-compatible-with-stylus-input-20101118/
Unfortunately, this is being ignored in the newly released Android smartphones.

Stefan Fischer, University of Heidelberg (Germany).

PS: I cannot wait for Steve Jobs to introduce iFood, the revolutionary way to eat with your fingers, instead of with fork&knive