To really answer your question, we need to consider why people need a stylus in the first place.

# 1. Stylus for resistive touchscreens (past -> present)

**You can't operate a resistive touchscreen with your finger**, at least not like a capacity touchscreen. Resistive touchscreens pretty much need hard objects in order to work correctly, which means your fingernail or a stylus. It won't work nicely with the flesh on your finger tip.

If you can use your fingernail, why use a stylus? Because **tapping and dragging with fingernails aren't nice things to do**, especially if one has recently clipped his/her fingernail.

Therefore, devices with resistive touchscreens pretty much all comes with a stylus for your convenience. Even the recent Nintendo 3DSLL and Wii U gamepad still comes with a stylus.

# 2. Stylus for capacitive touchscreens...? (present)

IIRC, **stylus for capacitive touchscreens didn't even exist when capacitive touchscreens first came out** <sup>[citation needed]</sup>. Most current styluses are not more accurate than finger tips, which makes them mostly redundant. Also because of this, the UI design has become adapted to using finger tips, so the need for high precision has greatly reduced. Also, styluses for capacitive touchscreens have special designs, which means more expensive than those for resistive touchscreens, which is simply a piece of plastic.

# 3. Stylus for drawing pads

**Accuracy**. Pretty much every drawing pad needs a stylus. Some even has pressure sensors to control the line thickness. So there's really nothing to say here.

# 4. Stylus on current smartphones?

Do note that some current smartphones or tablet devices also provide a stylus. However, **the stylus uses a different technology than the touchscreen itself**. The touchscreen is still capacitive, which makes it the same as #2. On the other hand, the stylus uses a technology similar to that on drawing pads. The use of stylus is usually for taking hand notes or drawing, which requires high precision.

The need of extra hardware to enable high-precision styluses means extra money, therefore, smartphones and tablet devices with this kind of styluses are usually more expensive than those without.

# Conclusion

From the UX point of view, the stylus was there because it makes it easier to use (dragging with stylus instead of fingernail). The stylus is abandoned in the mainstream market since it means extra cost, and there isn't really a need on modern devices with capacitive touchscreens anymore.