OnePlus Aqua Touch display technology explained: How it works and the issue it solves،
OnePlus' latest phones made a splash in early 2024, offering flagship-level specs and features at much more modest prices compared to the competition. The company has long been known for its “flagship killer” moniker, which it coined and earned during the glory days of its rise, when the OG OnePlus phone was launched. Well, the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R undoubtedly carry that spirit, and one of their most notable features is what OnePlus calls Aqua Touch technology. If you haven't heard of it already, you might guess what it refers to just by its name. Simply put, OnePlus has designed the screens of its latest phones in a way that allows them to continue working even when extremely wet. But what was Aqua Touch in the first place and how exactly was this “magic” achieved? Is OnePlus the only manufacturer that offers phones that can work when their screens get wet? Let's look at this more closely.
What are touch screens?
Before we even begin to understand how a phone's screen can continue to work after being doused with a lot of water, we first need to understand how it functions in a normal, dry state.
There are mainly two types of touchscreens used by modern gadgets: either resistive, like what you'll find on an ATM, or capacitive, like what our phones have.
Resistive touchscreens
Resistive displays are cheaper to manufacture, which is why they are typically used in products intended for mass use. They are generally less precise and less sensitive to touch, with the top layer being a transparent, flexible material, almost always plastic, with a layer of glass underneath.
Both layers are coated in a conductive substance, so when you press down on the flexible part, you practically bend it enough so that it touches the glass underneath, and the two connect. The point at which the layers connect is then recognized by the device, telling the software to respond based on the area you touched.
Capacitive touchscreens
Capacitive screens began gaining popularity in 2007, when Apple released the first iPhone. Since then, the main ingredients of the formula have generally remained the same for all phone models, with tough glass as the top layer of protection, driving and sensing lines that help determine your finger position and the LCD or OLED screen.
How does Aqua Touch work on OnePlus?
Typically, the capacitive touchscreens used by our phones have a hard time handling water droplets on them. In fact, these screens rely on the electrical current that we emit between our fingers to determine which part of the screen has been touched. Well, most water, like from rain or your sink at home, disrupts this electrical current, causing the phone to recognize random inputs when you touch it while it's wet. This makes typing, swiping, or any other hand gesture unreliable and inaccurate.
You might think that in response to this problem, OnePlus added or changed some of the hardware that makes up its latest phone's screens, but you'd be wrong. The company has found a way to make phones recognize when they are wet or touched by wet hands, triggering a change in screen responsiveness.
OnePlus hasn't revealed what exactly is going on behind the scenes, but more likely than not, we're looking at some sort of algorithm here and not just an increase in sensitivity.
The fact that this is a software solution also means that even if you scratch and crack the screen, it should continue to perform the same when wet, as it does even when not. is not damaged. Interestingly, Samsung's Galaxy S24 series also appears to perform almost as well as the Aqua Touch display on the OnePlus 12 and 12R, so it may not be as exclusive as the OnePlus claimed. Apple's iPhones, on the other hand, do not yet seem to have this innovation, as we say very recently in the video of the popular YouTuber JerryRigEverything.
