touchstart and touchend events in ionic 3 - html

Question

I'm looking for a separate event handler in Ionic 3 for starting and ending a touch on an HTML element on a mobile app.
I found many related and solved questions, but none for Ionic 3, which currently only seems to support "tap, press, pan, swipe, rotate, and pinch" (https://ionicframework.com/docs/components/#gestures).
And none of these seem to provide a "handler" at the start, but only at the end. I see that then they do give the data of the touch duration (deltaTime), but by that point it's no use for my purposes.
For more context, what I want is to clear a related timeout in the exact moment when the screen is first touched on an element, and then see whether or not this touch on the same specific element ends within a certain time (e.g. 250 ms, so that it can be evaluated as a "tap").
For example something like this:
JS:
timeout_1 = setTimeout(function() {
// do something if timeout_1 not cleared by touch start
}, 4000);
touched(event) {
clearTimeout(timeout_1);
touching_x = true
timeout_2 = setTimeout(function() {
touching_x = false
// store event details and do other things if timeout_2 not cleared by touch end
}, 250);
}
touch_ended(event) {
if (touching_x==true) {
clearTimeout(timeout_2);
// store event details and do some other things
}
}
HTML:
<button ion-button type="button" (button_touch_started) = "touched($event)" (button_touch_ended) = "touch_ended($event)">Touch button</button>
High precision (down to ms) would be important especially for the touch start time.
Any advice is appreciated.

Answer 1

Html
Try either div or button
<div style="height:100%;width:100%" (touchstart)="touchstart($event)" (touchend)="touchend($event)">
</div>
<button ion-button large primary (touchstart)="touchstart($event);">touchstart</button>
<button ion-button large primary (touchend)="touchend($event);">touchend</button>
Ts
touchstart(event){
console.log(event);
}
touchend(event){
console.log(event);
}