Touchscreen phones are all the rage in the world of mobile phones but are they really even necessary? Our unquenchable thirst for new technologies has us rushing to embrace a button-less world with little regard for whether a touchscreen phone even meets our needs satisfactorily. So before buying a new touchscreen phone what are the pros and cons of this latest technological advance?

PROS:

- Aesthetics – there’s no doubt that without a bulky keypad attached, touchscreen phones are slimmer and sleeker looking than their button counterparts and this is usually an important consideration when buying a new phone. The extra space allows for a bigger screen, perfect for watching videos, taking pictures and browsing web pages.

- The lack of moving parts used for touchscreen displays means there’s less to go wrong – no more buttons falling off!

- Ease of use – probably the most important factor is that a touchscreen phone is intuitively easy to use – scrolling pages, zooming in and out, individual buttons for individual letters as opposed to the traditional triplet groupings on a keypad – all of these features become simplified by the use of touchscreen technology.

For the latest in touchscreen phones, check out Vodafone where you can order the new Nokia 5230, which comes with a large touchscreen display.

CONS:

- Sensitivity – because touchscreen phones use a sensor to decide whether you’ve just touched the screen, the sensitivity of this sensor is very important. If sensitivity is set too high, you may not even have to touch the screen to ‘press’ a button, resulting in unintentional keystrokes. At the other end of the scale if sensitivity is set too low, it may take a lot of finger pressure to press a button, which could result in damage to the screen. The ability to configure sensitivity so that it suits you isn’t always easy or really possible, so usually it’s you that has to adjust. Keypads don’t need any adjustment period, you just press and go.

- Screen marks – quite simply, touching your screen all the time will leave finger marks and could possibly cause further damage, making it hard to view both text and images on the phone. With keypads, you don’t need to touch your screen at all.

- Texting/emailing – the difficulty of texting on a touchscreen is that without the feedback you get from touching a button, it’s hard to know (unless you’re concentrating on the screen) whether your touch registered, and with QWERTY keyboards as standard on touchscreens, it’s also harder to get positioning right. Being able to text without having to look at the screen is one of the great advantages of having a phone with a keypad.

So whether you still want a touchscreen or you’ve decided it’s not necessary, remember that before you blindly buy into new technology, make sure that it actually suits your needs.