Mobile phones with touchscreens are the order of the day and there are newer generations of phones replacing the older ones everyday. Older phones with a physical keypads are obsolete today anyway and the newer generation of phones and tablets are making sure that the resistive touchscreens are also pushed to oblivion.

Resistive Touchscreen: A touch screen that recognized pressure at an area to record user input.

Capacitive Touchscreen: The touchscreen which works based on difference in the charges that generated by the touch of a finger or any other conducting material.

It is interesting to note that a capacitive touchscreen will not respond to just any touch but only that touch which can transfer a charge and has a certain area of contact, generally around a quarter of an inch in diameter.

So not every pen or stick can be used as a stylus; which comes to the point of this tutorial.

Things you need:

• Conducting sponge, tin foil or copper wire

• A pen, or pencil

• Tape,

• Scissors, and

• A device where you will use the stylus.

Procedure: Take the pen and remove the refill inside it. It would be advisable to use a metal pen for better conductivity, i.e; the part where you hold the pen can conduct the charge from your hand.

If you can find a hollow metal pipe, you can use it to substitute the pen.

Take some conducting sponge, which is generally available as shock proofing for computer electronic accessories like chips and transistors.

Cut it into long straight pieces thicker than the size of the hole in the pen and pipe measuring 3 inches.

Squeeze it into a pen or a hollow pipe until it goes more than two inches deep.

Allow a part of the sponge to be exposed outside.

Trim this carefully with your scissors to have a smooth surface but make sure that the point of contact would be around the size of a quart of an inch, just under 1 cm.

Alternative Methods: If you don't have a conducting sponge, you can use the foil to wrap around a pencil and use it directly after taping it.

If you don't have metal pen, you can use a normal one and wrap a copper wire around the sponge and push it in. the excess wire should be allowed to be exposed on the outside and wrapped on the pen. However, the latter two methods are not as efficient as the first method.

You have your stylus ready with absolutely no cost.

(AW- Anil)