What is the difference between a capacitive and resistive touchscreen?

I have just bought a Sony Ericsson Vivaz %26amp; my sister bought the Samsung Galaxy Appollo. Looking at the reviews - mine has a resistive screen and hers has a capacitive. What is the difference?





Her phone is very easy to use but mine is stuck in the postal system somewhere so I haven't tried it yet.|||Capacitive - Touch is needed, not a push or tap. It is more convenient to use, since it responds faster. It is also more accurate compared to resistive.





Resistive - Needs a push or tap. Though not all the time, since different phones has different resistive screen quality. For example, most Samsung resistive touch phones perform better in touch performance than Nokia resistive phones. The advantage of resistive over capacitive is the ability to use styluses (capacitive screens have styluses, but are quite rare, and not very useful since the touch performance is very good), you can use your nails instead of your fingers, and you can use it with gloves on.|||Capacitive touchscreens are usually more responsive, because they dont rely on pressure, they detect the electrical impilses in your hand


Resistive screens do rely on pressure, and thus they are usually but not always less sensitive


however, their advantages are that you can use them with gloves in cold weather


also you can use a stylus with them, thus making them much more accurate|||capacative screens are quicker to respond as they dont need pressure to work (and dont respond to non-capacative sources). Resistive screens need pressure. Both work well for some things, but in general, phone screens seem to respond better to fingers so capacitive is better for that.