Testing Finds Inaccurate Touch Sensing on iPhone 5s/5c, But Neglects Perspective Compensation

[polterbyte]

No one is saying Apple is doomed, not even this article. They made what appears to be an objective review of the hardware as a whole.

No, nobody's saying Apple is doomed. Yet. But it will sure follow from this, by the haters' logic (or lack thereof), believe me.

Regarding the objectivity of this review, it also appears to be quite useless, since it doesn take into account the angle of usage, and since absolutely nobody has been complaining about any sort of imprecision.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Optofidelity is Finnish(ed).

 

[kenetic]

Not that lucky to have the phone yet.

 

[Brian Y]

As stated, this is by design. The touch screen isn't designed to be operated at a perfect 90 degree angle.

In fact the fact that the samsung passed with flying colours says more about their engineering!

 

[ppc_michael]

I don't see the relevance of the last section. "iPhone touch screen sucks compared to the GS3, but uh... uh... it loads webpages a bit faster!"

 

[barkmonster]

Guess you didn't read past the headline.

I saw the screenshots too and read the first post of the thread so if there was any more to read than that, I didn't read any further

 

[WaxedJacket]

The test doesn't work because the phones don't operate the same way. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[swertens]

The difference between 6 and 9 is 50%. Is that slight?

 

[Giuly]

So, the conclusion is that if you're this guy:

…then the iPhone doesn't work too well with your fingers. But why would a protocol droid need an iPhone in the first place and wouldn't something be utterly flawed if the fingers of a protocol droid didn't work better on an Android phone?

I'm more or less sure that I'm kinda remotely mammalian, and my fingers seem to work just fine on any of Apple's touch screens. Maybe unless I carry out what some people might call myocloni essentiales graves extensoris indicis, but then again how often do you play Fruit Ninja.

 

[macslayer118]

...the person I replied to said they INTENTIONALLY made the screen less responsive in other areas.

Stop trolling and taking things out of context... the person you're quoting said trying to use the phone with UI UPSIDE DOWN is more difficult because of this intentional touch sensing mechanism

 

[k995]

Funny when simular tests showed Iphone more responsive then andorid phones its "apple the best" now "this test is bad" How hypocrit people can be when their favorite brand is coming out as worse.

 

[chuckee.2002]

so? still want iPhone

 

[winston1236]

Shouldn't they be testing against a GS4?

No, the IP5 competes with the GS3.

 

[Nickpocalypse]

...the person I replied to said they INTENTIONALLY made the screen less responsive in other areas.

No, he didn't. You inferred that.

What he said was "Apple intentionally did that".

What he means, is this:
"Apple intentionally made it so the screen recognized touch a certain, small amount of distance away from where the finger was actually touching to account for user perspective, thereby making it easier to use."

What you've inferred, is this:
"Apple intentionally made the device hard to use".

You're wrong.

 

[aristokrat]

No one is saying Apple is doomed, not even this article. They made what appears to be an objective review of the hardware as a whole.

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They intentionally made their product difficult to use?

They intentionally made their product easier to use. Extensive user testing showed that people frequently pressed below the intended touch target, with increasing offset as the approached the top of the screen. They made the OS compensate for people's imperfect aim (more like people's inability to see through their fingers and thus misdirecting their touches) in order to have the human interface perform better than the person would on their own.

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The horizontal bias is interesting...almost seems like the compensation system favors left-handed use.

Or one-handed use with your right thumb.

 

[Torrijos]

I wish they could test the new iPads quickly, though it probably won't have an impact on my future iPad mini ret ^^.

 

[T-Will]

I've always noticed it takes me 4, 5 or 6 times to type a "Q" or "P" on my iPhone 5...now I know why!

/sarcasm

Apple has always said their keyboard is adaptive when typing (since the 1st iPhone), so I don't see the issue here.

 

[SuperMatt]

Once again, they just don't get it. It's clear Apple designed the touch screen to be used by humans - apparently the Samsung phone is the #1 choice of robots.

 

[Tech198]

Neat video.

Look at all that red..

However, i question all of this... I've used Galaxy S3 phones as well and never had this issue. ...

Is this one of those things that tried to over-hype everyone ? I need better proof than just a video..

I do my own testing

 

[Lousawyer6]

this is such BS haha, apples touch screen has always been #1. who the hell did this test

 

[loftiness]

touchscreen pseudoscience vs real science

any one in the HCI field will tell you optofidelity is doing it exactly the wrong way. they are basically measuring the shift apple applied to all the touch events. For real science see something like http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2207676.2208658
where researchers found that adding a shift to android keyboard makes it *Better* to type on, using real human participants. the key figure:

 

[suvsbob]

At least the robot did the test without bias, unlike many Apple fan boys here...

Yes, because that's EXACTLY how everybody uses their phones: with an artificial finger dangling from a robot arm. /s

Prepare for touchscreenprecisiongate, about which absolutely nobody is complaining.

Obligatory endnote: Apple is doomed. DOOMED!

 

[Colino]

Any tests of this kind that does not declare iPhone as the superior device must be technically flawed and has, ultimately, no merits.

 

[macs4nw]

It is intentional by Apple.
Try to touch some buttons if the UI is upside down... difficult, isn’t it?
Guess why
(Apple offsets the touch so that your eye-finger-button line is straight on the target)

…..They intentionally made their product difficult to use?

That's not what atzeX said; just that for normal usage, some compensation for touch accuracy has been built in.

They might consider calibrating their software a bit as this obviously does not match iPhone user experience..

That test seems purely like a lab approach, rather than real world usage conditions. Who on earth uses their finger at exactly a 90º angle to the screen when using their tablet? And even though the parameters were slightly different, this test somewhat contradicts an earlier test by Agawi. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1651697/

 

[SPUY767]

Funny that this is precisely the opposite of what I and others experience in actual use. Apple's touch performance generally feels very precise while android devices always seem to not be just right on the touch front. Perhaps this is by design and made to feel accurate to people, where the GS just reads raw touch data, hence the "accuracy" in this particular test.

Edit: It appears that I'm late to this party as everyone else has said exactly the same thing.