(2) Why don't touch screens and touchpads work with gloves on? - Quora

(2) Why don't touch screens and touchpads work with gloves on? - Quora

Nowadays the touchscreens of most of the phones or the ipad are Capacitive touch type, which also gives the possibility for multi touch gestures like pinch zoom etc.  Capacitive touchscreens work by the electrical capacitance between your hand and the screen/pad at the point of contact. So If you use an insulated stylus or are using a glove then there is no capacitance, and no interaction.

You can figure out this difference by comparing with the touch feel for some lower end phones or the usual older ATM machines with touchscreen, where you usually press more hard or with your nails or a stylus (earlier touchphones came with a stylus) , and it is not so smooth . They use resistive touch, which has two resisitive layers and it locates the coordinates where the contact is made on pressing, their gloves or stylus or nails worked but bare hands struggled.

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