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Karthik R

Jargon Buster : Mobile Phone Terminology

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Good now thing is how to read such a big post, LOL

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+1 Karthik Bhai for the useful informational thread. :)

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+1 bro

nice info

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@ Vinay bhai this award is certainly an honor. I do appreciate the recognition.

@ Manish sure buddy. Go ahead.

@ Kailash, Kamal bhai thanks a bunch :)

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its really a great work done.........+1 for you

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Edit : Added HDMI to the list

Members can post here any terms where they need clarification. Forum experts will revert back :)

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+10 for you Karthik...

You continue to amaze me with highly technical topics....

Keep up the good work....Forum is with you....

Since, your topics are hard core technicals, there may not be much discussions other than appreciations.

Please remember that your topics enthralls many so they don't have much thing to speak other than being bowled over....

Less posts in your thread means your presentation is top notch without any confusion which in itself is equivalent to million accolades....

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Resistive vs Capacitive touch screens

If you are planning to buy a new smartphone, there is a good chance that you will ultimately land upon a touchscreen device. Most of the the mobile phones these days come with superior technology and a normal phone buyers generally gets confused when he tries to decode the tech specs associated with a handset.

And when it comes to touchscreen devices, the oft heard jargon is capacitive or resistive touchscreen phones. This post will help you understand the basic difference between these two types of touchscreen phones.

The most important of these is that there are actually two types of touchscreen predominantly used in phones – resistive and capacitive ^_^

How they work

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Resistive touchscreens are pressure-sensitive. They work by detecting the amount of force which is applied to the screen. It doesn’t matter how you apply the force: you could press it with your finger, use a stylus or prod it with a stick. Generally you will have to apply a fair bit of pressure to a resistive touchscreen for it to register a response – most people use the tip of their fingernail or occasionally a stylus.

The resistive touchscreen itself is made up of several layers, the topmost of which flexes under your finger or stylus, and is pushed back onto a layer behind it. This effectively completes a circuit, telling the phone which part of the screen is being pressed.

As the oldest and simplest touchscreen technology, resistive touchscreens are cheap to produce. For this reason, they tend to be found in older or cheaper phones.

capasitive-touch-screen-phone.jpg

Capacitive touchscreens are sensitive to your body’s electric field. Capacitive is now the dominant technology for new high-end smartphones such as the Apple iPhone, HTC Desire and Blackberry Torch. Because capacitive touchscreens simply “sense” the existence of your finger electrically rather than requiring you to push down on the touchscreen they tend to be much more responsive. For example, it’s possible to simply glide your finger along the screen (e.g. unlock gesture) – something which is difficult with a resistive touchscreen.

Multi-touch screens are generally built on capacitive technology.

Disadvantages of capacitive touchscreen technology is that you cannot used it with gloves on (your body’s electric field cannot pass through the glove) and it cannot be used with a traditional mechanical stylus. However special capacitive touchscreen styluses are available.

Capacitive touchscreen technology also tends to be more expensive and is hence seen mainly in higher-end smartphones.

As resistive and capacitive aren't necessarily the words you will hear out on the high street, I am listing here some of the popular phones and exactly which sort of touchscreen they use.

  • HTC Hero Capacitive
  • HTC Magic Capacitive
  • Motorola Milestone Capacitive
  • Apple iPhone 3G Capacitive
  • Nokia N97 Resistive
  • HTC HD2 Capacitive
  • Samsung Epic 4G Capacitive
  • Samsung Corby Resistive
  • LG Cookie Resistive

If you didn’t understand the technical aspects no problem, if your use is limited to just the user-experience then undoubtedly a capacitive on is better any day than a resistive one :)

Sourced info from pcpro, neodragon

Edited by Karthik R
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+1 for the informational thread dear Karthik. :)

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Wireless charging is making some serious headway in public mindshare. Once confined to toothbrushes and other simple household items, it's now a handy means of powering phones (HP's Touchstone, for example) and media players, and it'll soon be ready to charge up our notebooks and cameras at our command. Are we sure this is the future, or will this just be a passing fad? Why should it matter? Read on to get the answers to those burning questions.

What is wireless charging?

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The principle of wireless charging has been around for over a century, but only now are we beginning to recognize its true potential. First, we need to be careful about how liberal we use "wireless" as a term; such a word implies that you can just walk around the house or office and be greeted by waves of energy beamed straight to your phone but as of today the word merely refers to not using cords. Wireless charging is any of several methods of charging batteries without the use of cables or device-specific AC adaptors. It can be used for a wide variety of devices including cell phones, laptop computers and MP3 players as well as larger objects like electric cars. There are three methods of wireless charging : inductive charging, radio charging and resonance charging.

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In inductive charging, an adapter equipped with contact points is attached to the device's back plate. When the device requires a charge, it is placed on a conductive charging pad. Once the contact points come in contact with the conductive surface of the charging pad, a small current moves through the coils of the charging pad, creating a small magnetic field which is gathered by the contact points of the adapter and converted into energy. The energy gathered is transferred to the device's battery as efficiently as if the device were connected to a wall socket with its regular wired adapter.

Energizer Qi Wireless Charger: First Hands On by akaTRENT

It's a great idea, but one reason why this wireless tech has been restricted to nothing but a glorified conceptualization (until recently, anyways) is because no standard had been set. Each company was left to fend for itself, coming up with its own proprietary accessories for individual products. The bill of materials can rack up quickly when there's no standard and no interoperability, so how can such a ragtag operation really succeed?

Wireless charging standards

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Enter the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), the masterminds behind Qi (pronounced 'Chee'). Sound familiar? If so, that's probably because it's getting into everything. Qi is a set of guidelines for inductive charging units that WPC is hoping will become the universal standard. It's rounded up 84 manufacturers, semiconductors, and telecom providers under its wing so far, a number which no other organizations have come close to matching. Qualcomm and CEA are still busy nailing down their own standards, both of which are set to hit the market sometime this year, so Qi is the current default. Even when the WPC finally has official competition, it's got an astronomical head start.

With so many businesses hopping on the bandwagon, this leaves more room for innovation and specialization of products. Interoperability of this magnitude can offer a large number of benefits: it's easier to market a product when you're backed up by an established protocol that everybody else uses, and the cost to consumers is much lower to get set up since everything is compatible. In a niche market, proprietary (or standalone) product lines are much more difficult for consumers to get behind. But once the vast majority of legit tech companies -- Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Energizer, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson are among WPC's list of members -- begin integrating Qi into phones, laptops, DSLR cameras, keyboards, kitchen countertops, and furniture, chances are you're a lot more tempted to buy a Qi-compatible product than something from a random yahoo. Think about it this way: we'd be much more inclined to board a train if it already has a destination, passengers, and enough manpower to get somewhere, rather than one that's empty and just sitting around waiting for people to show up. The Qi train looks entirely more salacious.

The WPC set certain guidelines for Qi because it not only wants to keep everything compatible, it's also ensuring its members will comply with certain safety rules, software guidelines, and other procedures that make it the most efficient charging option available. When your phone is plugged into a standard wall outlet, it's still soaking up way too much power even when the battery is full. Qi has set a guideline to cut the consumption levels down in this case. As a side effect, however, this method limits the amount of power transfer taking place even during a regular charge, which means it takes a bit longer to power something up completely. Fortunately, the transmitter and receiver can even send data to each other to determine if a battery is full and needs to stop charging.

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Energizer Qi-compatible charging pad powering up both a Samsung Droid Charge (with the inductive battery cover attached) and an iPhone 3GS with the Energizer sleeve. It doesn't matter which company made the product, any item that's Qi-certified will do the trick.

When the standard was established last year, the WPC came out with only one power setting for Qi: low. With a maximum power output of 5W, the low standard's only enough to power the smaller gadgets -- phones, media players, and anything else that doesn't require much of a charge. The medium setting, currently in the works, will take care of anything in the 5W - 120W range like notebooks, netbooks, tablets, and cameras. According to Pavan Pudipeddi on TI's battery management solutions team, it's taking longer to get this standard wrapped up, due to a conundrum that's taking extra time to solve: the difference between 5 and 120 is substantial, so how does a Qi surface tell between tablets (that require 25-30) and power-hungry notebooks (65-90)?

By no means is Qi the only wireless charging standard in development, but it definitely has a head start over the competing organizations. Here's a few of its main competitors:

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WiPower : This standard under development by Qualcomm involves near-field inductive charging with flexible couplings, so that it can transmit up to two inches (compared to Qi's few mm distance). It can also cover an 5- x 3-inch area so that multiple devices can fit on one square, rather than requiring one coil per device. The longer distance will be a strong advantage for WiPower, as it means you'd just have to stick a coil underneath a table or desk instead of taking Qi's method of integrating it directly into the surfaces -- a much more expensive approach, to be sure. This standard also offers a more flexible range, so you can take your laptop and move it around a little without it being stuck on your desk in one specific spot. Once it launches, it could prove to be a worthy adversary to keep Qi from floating away with the "Universal Standard" trophy.

UL : Underwriters Laboratories announced last year that it was building its own low-power inductive charging standard called UL 2738. Catchy name, right? There's a tricky thing about this particular standard -- it will be mandated. This may sound like a familiar idea to you; if you've taken a close look at power supplies or light products, you may have seen a UL label printed somewhere on them. The standard is wholly safety-based, which means it's completely separate from the other protocols. Fortunately, everyone can co-exist with the UL in perfect harmony. We can't stress enough how crucial this is to paving the way to the tech's future; wireless chargers that need mandated certifications from the UL are a huge indicator that there is a very strong interest in this type of service becoming mainstream, available on every street corner.

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CEA : Similarly, the CEA created the Wireless Charging Working Group to begin work on its own standard, which should be ready to be submitted to the CEA management board by the end of this year, and then on to get approval from the IEEE. Its guidelines will be much broader in scope than the WPC and include a wide range of technologies. Also, in a similar fashion to UL, this particular standard will be inclusive of other protocols, and several members of the WPC -- such as Qualcomm, Intel, GM, Powermat, and Motorola -- have joined with this working group.

As a side note, we could only find one company that has pledged support and membership with all four major protocols: Powermat. This won't mean its products will change from its proprietary charging method and become universal per se, but it does opens up the door for it to work in conjunction with these protocols and partner with multiple manufacturers. It also offers the company additional flexibility if any change in strategy is necessary.

Health implications

A huge point of concern when developing these kinds of standards is how it will affect our health. When thinking about wireless, it's easy to envision radioactive waves zapping us as they float around in the air -- and we have every right to know if this type of charging will cause us any type of harm. In the case of inductive charging, however, we won't need to worry about trying to duck the attack of invisible rays. The WPC established guidelines to ensure its products won't expose us to levels of radiation or ionization that could cause any harm to human tissue.

As an example, the WPC quotes the ICNIRP, a scientific committee that has published its own guidelines on exposure limits. It states: "there is no substantive evidence that adverse health effects, including cancer, can occur in people exposed to levels at or below the ICNIRP limits." According to the studies conducted by this committee, so long as Qi and the other standards see to it that products don't exceed the max exposure, we shouldn't be concerned. Check out More Coverage at the bottom to get more details on these studies.

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Radio charging is used for charging items with small batteries and low power requirements, such as watches, hearing aids, medical implants, cell phones, MP3 players and wireless keyboard and mice. Radio waves are already in use to transmit and receive cellular telephone, television, radio and Wi-Fi signals. Wireless radio charging works similarly. A transmitter, plugged into a socket, generates radio waves. When the receiver attached to the device is set to the same frequency as the transmitter, it will charge the device's battery.

Resonance charging is used for items that require large amounts of power, such as an electric car, robot, vacuum cleaner or laptop computer. In resonance charging, a copper coil attached to a power source is the sending unit. Another coil, attached to the device to be charged, is the receiver. Both coils are tuned to the same electromagnetic frequency, which makes it possible for energy to be transferred from one to the other. The method works over short distances (3-5 meters).

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See how it works in your electric car here B)

Credit : Engadget, searchmobilecomputing

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This really helped.

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thanks for usefull info

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I have observed that charging time increases when 2 mobiles are charged n their charging wires are tangled in each other..

Is my observation backed by some scientific therory or it is just my delusion?

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