iPhone vs DROID multitouch keyboard showdown (video)
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 5th 2009 6:31PM
posted November 5th 2009 6:31PM
posted November 5th 2009 6:31PM
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And let me just nip it in the bud: I know I screwed up the phrase.
The quick brown fox?
That fox is neither quick nor brown.
Haha brown cow. Drinking milk while typing that?
It's ok. But I was able to easily beat you on my iPhone (around 3 seconds faster), same phrase.
That's not to say that it's a problem... 3 seconds out of 17 isn't going to kill anybody, and I bet the physical keyboard is better.
(BTW... 3 seconds the first try, no practice or warmup... haven't typed on the phone all day.)
Fanfare for the Common Man--Awesome.
Hm. I beat him by almost 7 seconds and I'm not a particularly fast typer. First try as well.
10 second, Blackberry Storm running 5.0.
10 sec as well on my G1 physical keyboard.
And if you notice on Nilay's video-- iphone doesn't popup auto word-fill, the droid does--which if you give it a millisec break, it will typically pick the right word making typing faster.
FYI Nilay, the 'G' key is in the middle *under your thumb*.
Just tried it on my iPhone, 9 seconds
@CaptainCaveman: It's not so much holding one while pushing another, but super fast typists (like me) with fat fingers will regularly hit the next key before lifting the last one.
Wow you guys are slow (other iPhone users), 6 seconds on my iPhone.
If you are THAT uncoordinated that you cant lift up your other thumb to type another letter you shouldnt have to worry about typing at all.
no offense but i could rape that typing with my iphone lol i think im the fastest iphone typer of all time.
seriously, NO ONE CARES how fast you can type it
@arcticpenguins... Funny, I thought that was pretty much the whole point of the article, comparing the keyboards.
But my bad, how dare I suggest something *could* perhaps be slightly a little better than the DROID! Hell, I might as well have posted ASCII art displaying an iPhone...
@Chris why do you prefer soft keyboards?
ROM flash coming?
Correct me if I am wrong Droid has physical keyboard, then why should they bother much with on-screen keyboard, you would do anything to get on Apples patent application won't you..
Some people like virtual keyboards.
Like, you know, me.
but, then you have to be smarter and buy phone without a physical keyboard like Eris or wait for HTC passion...
The Droid's screen is a half inch bigger than the Eris' and it has lots more pixels. Plus this has 2.0 and Google Nav.
Also, you can't tap out a quick text with one hand on a slide out qwerty.
Sigh, does anyone even read the articles or do they see an Apple mention and quickly try to get as many jabs in as possible. This whole thing is related to twitter followers saying the DROID has a multitouch soft keyboard and this proves otherwise. It's not saying the iPhone is better or that because it has a physical keyboard you should use it, in fact this doesn't even seem to be a knock its merely addressing the fact that some people think it has a multitouch soft keyboard so calm down people. jeez
You also have to rotate the device. Meaning looking at whatever you were looking at in landscape mode, which isnt always the best mode. Opposite problem the pre has.
i have a G1 and i use the onscreen keyboard. it just depends on the situation like, me for example. i use the onscreen keyboard (both landscape and portrait) to be discreet with texts.
I have an iPhone 3G for personal use a BlackBerry 8330 for business use, and I can type about twice as fast on my iPhone. Yes, some people prefer virtual keyboards.
@Lulu: You mean you don't like the SCHLACK noise to give away your "in meeting, so bored" txt?
I find it aggravating that the concept of a multitouch on-screen keyboard can be patented anyway. I am pretty sure I saw people typing on a screen in Star Trek when I was a kid... with multiple fingers. Among the other billions of sci-fi movies.
The actual touch screen device it self, the hardware that registers those touches, that deserves a patent. But since every "normal" keyboard on our desks IS a mutli-touch device, it stands to reason that any virtual keyboard would be too. It boggles me that someone should be awarded a patent on that.
Although I do believe patents do serve a purpose, I also think that no company should be awarded a patent unless they have already built the technology and show true intention to bring said product to the market. This crap of people filing for 10000's of patents based on reading sci-fi novels and watching movies then suing the person who actually does the work to invent it... that is going to end up hurting technological evolution.
@Ryan
"Also, you can't tap out a quick text with one hand on a slide out qwerty."
Well if that's the case then why does multi-touch matter? You have two thumbs on one hand?
@Tes: I never said I wanted multitouch for the keyboard. I've said I want Multi-Touch for Android, but not for the keyboarding aspect. I suspect that Multi-touch is why the iPhone virtual keyboard is as good as it is, but I think Multitouch is more useful for Pinch-to-Zoom and games.
The droid's keybaord is multitouch. Here is the test:
-Slide it open,
-tap in a text box or other text field
-press and hold the "alt" key
-press other keys
-notice that the highlighted alternate characters are appearing on the screen.
What a useless demonstration for the iphone part. Why not demonstrate the iphone's multitouch keyboard by doing something useful like holding the shift key and typing multiple letters in caps.
It was only there to demonstrate the differences. I think it did a decent job. So this pretty much settles it, the Droid doesn't have a multi-touch keyboard. I wonder how long it will take for a developer to make one, since they have already made multi-touch pinch-zoom in some other applications.
Again why this is missing is still a big mystery. Hopefully its just because Google hadn't gotten around to it in time (the Euro Droid had it, but the multi-touch there was made by Motorola, if I am correct, and not Google).
And for those who don't know, you don't need a new ROM (or root) to install a new virtual keyboard, it's similar installing an app.
Not every video needs to show off the iPhone. This was a demo of multitouch vs. non-multitouch keyboards. Not a comparison of which is better.
Why do iPhone fans always insist on this kind of crap?
This demo is stupid. Android's implementation of the keyboard is different than the iPhone. He can't compare them that way.
Other then the point that Tony brought up about holding shift to type in all caps I can think of no other time that I wanted to hold one key while typing another. And with that said I would only hold down the shift key while typing only long words. And there was the times when I couldn't even do that if the keys were on the left side of the screen.
I'm sure I must be missing something here, but I don't know why anyone would even want to hold a key (other then shift) while typing out other keys...
@CaptainCaveman When you are typing really fast on something like the iphone sometimes your fingers wont be lifting up and coming down successively they may hit the letters at the same time, without multitouch you would just get double letters. Thats the best reason i can think of.
+1 Tsing Tao
This is the real feature.
I find for myself though that there is just so much farther that virtual keyboards could be taken. I haven't seen one that is usefully context sensitive for example. Or being able to rotate through numbers/punctuation and a simple number keypad. Lots of work yet to be done with Virtual Keyboards
@nikeairj
It's letters arranged in a QWERTY layout, placed on the bottom of a touchscreen. How different can they get?
Come on guys, bring the HD2 review already..
YES! I'm dying over here...
apple holding them back, They are like
Apple: NO!! You can't have a good review on our competitors devices!!
Engadget: But it is really that good,
Apple: No, say something wrong with it or you won't be on our patent application...
You sir, are an idiot.
@Dking : "Windows Mobile".
I think Apple should be satisfied now.
@Destricto_Ense:
Windows Mobile + HTC > Apple + er.... themselves.
HTC does a heck of a lot to make windows mobile nice, and i think they succeed.
With the presence of a hardware keyboard, is this really a big deal? I know my personal preferences would be to use the hardware keyboard.
I guess my real question is: given that the device has a hardware keyboard, will many of you still use the soft keyboard over the hard one?
well I for one am coming from an iPhone to the Droid so i probably will use the soft keyboard more, if nothing else but out of habit.
Think about all the times you're quickly looking at something and don't want to take the time to slide the keyboard out. Obviously when you're going to compose a lengthy email or you're just sitting, doing nothing else, the keyboard will be out and it won't be an issue. BUT I would bet most users are like myself and are typically just using the phone for a quick few seconds, usually while doing something else, and a solid virtual keyboard will be very important.
I have had mine for 2 days now and I hardly ever use the hardware keyboard. Its not quite as easy as using the iPhone/iPod Touch's softkeyboard, but it is not a horrible software solution at all. It works quite well. The main reason I got the DROID over the Eris was the keyboard. If the Passion drops within 30 days, I may just upgrade to it. If not, I always have my wife's line to purchase another phone on and then Ebay to hock the Moto on.
Ok fanboys, start your fight now!