technocozy.com

A few years back I had just come out of the Nail Spa at Soho and my then boyfriend was grinning at me from across the street. He had a box in hand, and it had an iPhone, and he thought it was the best gift possible for me because he was getting back from a boys’ trip to Vegas. Ah men! I beamed at him, even if I wanted to tear him apart right then. I had nails, man, not the super-long tacky kinds, but I had nails. Nails that I had just done up at the spa. What was he thinking?

So I went home with it and put it away. Back then the iPhone was still new, and not half as regular as it has become today. I didn’t want any scratches on it, had no idea why it wouldn’t work when I touched my nails to the screen (hey, I was still touching it right?) and how they expected us to type on it. It was ridiculous that I had a brand new phone and I still stuck to my Japanese – schoolgirl type pink flipper.

Then my sister saw it stashed away and freaked out, “Honey, it doesn’t matter! You can still use the iPhone if you have nails.”

What I learned over brunch that day and what has helped me hold multiple conversations at cocktails later is that touchphones use a technology that requires you to use your fingers, and not just your nails or a stylus to navigate around your phone. It has a capacitive material that makes use of the fact that your body is an electrical conductor (yeah I know, we are sizzling for a reason!). So when you touch the screen with a finger, not nails or through gloves, a change in capacitance determines the location of your touch. The controller then processes it and you have the application you wanted.

The iPhone’s capacitors are arranged in a coordinate system, allowing you use multiple fingers for zooming etc. Its circuitry senses where you are touching the grid and every point makes its own signal which is then passed on to the processor. Now even if we discount how the iPhone works, it is important that you touch the phone with your finger and not your nails. And that is where the problem lies. How does a woman, with nails as pretty as mine, use a touchphone?

It is not easy and it is extremely surprising to know how many women over the world have had the same problem with touchscreens. Has it affected sales? Well may be, because Apple and Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry have neither accepted it nor denied it. But if these men thought that it would be easy to get one up on women by inventing and using something that women are inconvenienced by, well, think again. We innovate. We adapt. And like life, we too find a way.

So how do we go about it? The first thing you need to do is learn how to type with the side of your finger instead of straight on. Else, hold your hand at a flatter angle so the pads of your fingers touch the phone. That makes it easy for you to get a grip on the extremely troublesome typing aspect. You might have to hold the phone a little differently, but who cares? Being different is being stylish, right? And being stylish is natural to us, because according to Nielsen Mobile, the number of women buying iPhones has increased to one in three from the earlier one in four.

The second thing you need to know is that these screens these days are much harder than your nails. So unless you have like a diamond dust nail art or something, there is little chance that you would seriously scratch your screen. To be on the safer side, use a screen cover, you know, one of those transparent plastic films they put on LCDs that can resist scratches? Not much of an option really, because Apple really refuses to let go of the misogyny.

Third option? Curl your index finger a little bit and use the first knuckle. I saw a woman at the Apple Store do it, and yes it works.

Winter is far from over. Using a touchphone with nails is quite a menace unless you are comfortable typing with the sides of your fingers. So what I would recommend is that you borrow a friend’s touch phone for a few days and see how far you get on it. If it is not your cup of cappuccino, simply buy a phone with a resistive touchscreen, one that can read nails, or one with a slide-out keyboard.

Me, I clipped my nails a little bit because I figured I could sacrifice that oh-so-little millimeter to stick to my new favourite touch screen device. It’s the touch of love dearies.