One of the great chasms in today’s smartphone market is on the use of capacitive versus resistive touchscreen, with newer platforms using capacitive and older heavyweights like Windows Mobile and Symbian (Nokia) still relying on the resisitive variant. Now, a company called Touchco is bringing a technology called IFSR (Interpolating Force-Sensitive Resistance) multitouch sensor technology to the market, which essentially combines capacitive and resistive touchscreen mechanisms into one touch panel so manufacturers and users do not need to choose.

Touchco is stating that the IFSR technology it uses is affordable, costing about $10 per square foot of the display. It is expected in consumer electronics devices in 2010.

The difference is that capacitive, which gets activated by electrical changes from the tips of the users finger rather than pressure, offers more finger-friendliness in handheld devices. Resistive, on the other hand gets activated when two layers of the screen gets pressed together, is more stylus friendly and can handle more accurate inputs–lending itself to handwriting recognition in the past.

(via: IntoMobile)