What is a touchtone phone?

Question

i'm supposed to get one for college this year, but i haven't got a clue what it is. how is it different from a regular phone?

Answer 1

All the modern phones are touchtone phones.

When you press buttons for dialing, you will hear a different tone for each button pushed.  The tones represent the number pressed.

Old phones, were "rotary".  They had a big rotary dial on it. They did not dial with tones.  They dialed by contacts opening and closing the number of times representing the number "dialed".