The jury is still out on whether Apple's iPhone is revolutionary or just an over-hyped gadget. But revolutionary or not, one thing that the device has managed to do is draw attention to touchscreens like never before. Suddenly, almost every major cell phone manufacturer is trying to incorporate touchscreen features into their phones.

If that's unbelievable, then just cast your eyes on some of the high-profile mobile releases this year. LG Prada is touch-driven, as is HTC's appropriately named, Touch. Motorola's ROKR E6 too has a major touch screen element; the recently released Moto RAZR 2 V8 contains an external display that responds to human touch, depending on the application. Even new entrants in the Indian cell phone market like Haier and Spice are coming up with devices that have touch screen support. Nokia has already declared its intention to build an iPhone-like device and Sony Ericsson is reported to be already working on one for its Walkman series of phones.

Gaining popularity
Touch screens are not new. Users of the Palm series of handhelds will proudly talk about touch-sensitive device usage in the 90s. While this is undoubtedly true, the fact is that touch screens earlier were considered a niche feature, generally used only by upmarket consumers, and were therefore seen only in expensive, high-end devices. What's more, touch screen devices were not easy to use. One had to use a stylus to scribble on the screen and the handwriting recognition software was either inaccurate or very difficult to learn (such as Palm's Graffiti). The result: while touchscreens were always there, they were never considered mainstream. The likes of Palm, Sony Ericsson, DoPod, HP and i-mate had touch screen devices, but they were meant for enterprise users rather than the common cell phone user.

That perception ('touch screen = enterprise') seems to have changed, courtesy the iPhone. The touchscreen is rapidly becoming a mainstream feature. Most significantly, mobile manufacturers are now trying to follow Apple's footsteps and come out with devices that are designed to respond to the human finger rather than the stylus. The rationale is simple – a device that needs a stylus cannot be used with one hand (the user will need one hand to hold the phone and another to hold the stylus), making it almost impossible to use when one is on the move. Also, as the RAZR 2 and LG Prada have shown, touchscreens are also becoming acceptable in the 'stylish' phone segment. The touchscreen's seemingly exclusive linkage with business devices seems to have been well and truly severed.