It's completely anecdotal and lacking in what some might call "scientific rigor," but we're digging the,
ahem, relevance of Phil Gyford's little text input faceoff he performed for his blog recently. The piece pits an Apple Newton, Palm Vx, Treo 650, and Apple iPhone up against each other, with regular pen and paper and a laptop's full QWERTY keyboard thrown in for reference. The results may or may not surprise you, but (spoiler alert) after the MacBook Pro took top honors in blazing through a 221 word passage twice, the iPhone beat out the rest of the competition, with the three pen-related inputs (pen and paper, Newton MessagePad and Palm Graffiti) all taking up dead last. The iPhone, Treo and pen and paper all were relatively close in speed, and naturally your mileage may vary. That said, where do you think you fall? Drop in your results in comments (the full text he used can be found at the source link) or hit up the poll below with your best guestimate. We're dying to know!
Which mobile text input method is faster for you?| Hardware QWERTY | 12585 (62.5%) |
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| Software QWERTY | 3974 (19.7%) |
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| Pen and paper | 3133 (15.6%) |
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| Handwriting recognition | 442 (2.2%) |
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posted January 25th 2010 8:59PM
You should specify MULTI TOUCH soft keyboard, or single touch. as I much prefer my iPhone multi touch keyboard, but not the "click" of the blackberry storm, or the crippled Droid.
Damn trolls...
@emax
I see your point, but really with each of possible choices. Hardware keyboards are different from phone to phone. Same idea with devices based handwriting. Even pens and paper to some point.
Perhaps we could just assume which you prefer on the best device for the job(in your mind)
@emax
I have no idea what your are talking about the Droid being crippled. I'm using Swype on mine and I don't need two thumbs to type anymore.
@djt He's obviously referring to the keyboard as it comes out-of-the-box. One of the great things about Andriod is indeed how easily it can be customized. It's still unfortunate that Google doesn't include multitouch in the built-in apps to start with.
I can type faster on my iPod touch than any hardware keyboard I've ever used (except a full-sized computer keyboard), but then when you figure the Nintendo DS would technically fall into the same category... *shudders*
I'm just not sure how I should vote. I'm with emax, it looks like there should be a few more categories up there to say the least.
@chaos215bar2 Yes. This is exactly what I am talking about.
@zap2 Id say just a few sub catigories would help the stats. Full physical qwerty and sure type physical qwerty are also very different. All in all my point really is that I feel the typing experience really varies from phone to phone these days. Wether it's soft or hard keyboard. Little software or physical differences could make it or break it for some people. Take a bb curve keyboard vs a palm pre. Some people I know hate the smaller jelly keys of the pre but love the bb. How would they vote? I'd say engadget is going to do a mega indepth review now of all keyboards. Right engadget??
I'd be interested to see a Dvorak comparison :D
Props for the Lamy pen though!
I'm faster on my iPod touch's landscape qwerty than a full size MBP.
@richardspagna
then you're doing it wrong.
@richardspagna
It's difficult to type on a MBP with your thumbs is it?
@richardspagna
speaking of MBP keyboards
what kind of crazy enter key is that in the picture?
@JeremyBenthem
Yeah...is that how it is on the new keyboards?
p.s. fu xKNGx and delphinus87
@richardspagna
I know how much people hate to hear it, but an iPod touch seems to be the fastest mobile typing device- but only once you adapt to the fact that the screen requires precisely zero force for touch recognition. Pushing buttons might feel nice, but the force and time needed to apply that pressure makes its soft keyboard considerably faster for those that can adapt to take advantage of it's benefits.
@Mmmm Donuts do you read the news, the have texting competitions, and the ENV3 platform won the last one; by a teenage girl. The softkey problem is that it provides no feedback, and the forces you are talking about are minor. Admittedly the swipe feature on a soft keyboard with really well tuned predictive text is uber fast, but not faster than a thumb tuned teenage girl on a physical Q keyboard; look at the votes, it is not about adapting, the soft key has an intrinsic weakness, no feedback; at least not on the Iphone/ Touch
@cosmicinglewood
Feedback does not increase speed, nor ease of typing, for any physical reason. It is all mental, and therefore fungible. Essentially, it's just something we've become accustomed to. I'm sure if they had done typing tests a lot further back, people would complain about the phone not making the *ding* noise of a typewriter. Humans are a very adaptable species, I'm sure if you just give us a while, a combination of proper R&D on the company's end and kids growing up on iPod touches will provide better results in the next wave of teens. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if they did better on them than on any handheld physical keyboard.
@JeremyBenthem Thats the UK layout, we always have that enter key. Dno why...
I typed this using an ink typewriter, scanned it into my computer and used image recognition to paste the fonts in this comment.
It will be faster than any software QWERTY.
Without the awesomeness that is the Touch Pro2 keyboard I consider these results void.
@zachavm
That keyboard is so good I would consider it ALMOST on par with a laptop keyboard for typing emails.
@New Reformation
YES, I have a Tilt 2 and the keyboard is amazing, it also looks amazing- best keyboard on a phone in my opinion since the blackjack 2
@New Reformation Then you can't type. But I do agree TP2 keyboard is excellent.
@zachavm
as much as I love to not like windows mobile phones, I tried out the Touch Pro 2 and honestly.... it's just plain outstanding
@zachavm
I wholeheartedly agree and I'm so glad I finally bought mine.
@zachavm
FYI to everyone, The TP2 keyboard gets even better with the Rhodium Keyboard mapper program. you can map any key to anything you want. I've got copy shortcuts, hardware softkeys through holding the 1 and 0, and a windows and ok button through holding the mail and sms button (on my sprint version). It's outstanding!
Now if they would only come out with this phone in an Android flavor instead of all those stupid tablet style iPhone esque versions.
I got pretty used to the soft keyboard on my iPhone 3GS, although the physical keyboard of my Blackberry Bold 9700 has the advantage of me typing without looking at the phone... I think the iPhone is faster though I have to be looking at the screen
I'd like to see something with a much better hardware keyboard thrown in the mix. I think something wider, with some offset keys (like the Touch Pro2) would perform a lot better than the cramped Treo
DVORAK FTW
@JeremyBenthem
metric time...
@JeremyBenthem
Hell yea for Dvorak love! :)
@engadgethead
I've got no problem with it, if metric time became the standard, they would think our system is a joke
I hope everyone prefers a hardware keyboard... I love my iPhone, but you can't beat a good 'ol keyboard.
Although I can remember getting pretty fast with Palm's Graffiti... Last decade.
@Jonathan K
lol i think you mean the 90's? depending on how you look at it, we're in a new decade. it's pretty weird to think about for me since i spent half my life in the 2000's (i'm 19).
@Jonathan K and yeah definitely with the hardware keyboards... especially those with short-travel keys like laptop keyboards.
@Jonathan K I topped out at about 45 words per minute on Grafitti after several years of use. That said, on my Treo (and now on my Pre), I can usually top 60 wpm. Plus, I don't get achy stylus-finger with a QWERTY keyboard.
Tactile feedback has been shown to be important to gamers' performance when designing controllers; clearly, there are benefits for something as mundane as typing.
But, for those who consume way more content than they produce, a virtual keyboard might be adequate...the rest of us need buttons, dammit.
@OCEAN CLAK
It's "capacitive touch screens" not "capacity touch screens ". Some one should have been using a hardware keyboard.
Speaking of Palm, you guys could have at least showed a nice strictly PDA device, like a T|X... not that ancient Vx
I know that the iPhone's keyboard actually tends to work better the faster I type on it, but I love actual keys far too much. Consider me an old man in a young boy's body.
@dishbreak So, you're with the church then?
@Cromagazine Don't follow. What are you talking about?
@Cromagazine Comment of the year
@Cromagazine ...I get it now. Nicely played.
@dishbreak
I agree the typing and spelling recognition in the iPhone is amazing, but i do liek a good laptop keyboard or diNovo keyboard over a normal keybaord...
cant stand a blackberry press key type or the storms... absolutly garbage.
@DeFlanko: Funny you should mention that. I use my computers on a 37" LCD with a Logitech DiNovo Edge keyboard, and between that and using my MacBook, I've gotten so used to the shorter keys, that I can barely type on a normal keyboard now. I just set up another computer (that I'm on now actually) with an plain older style Dell keyboard, and it's throwing me off.
Multitouch keyboard software is as inaccurate as it gets. The only reason you get it right its because of the autocorrecting mechanism.
Well, I love the capacitive touch of my iPhone, but I sorely miss the detailed pen-based input I had with all my old resistive-touch Windows Mobile phones.
That's one gaping hole of LACK I see with capacitive touch screens. It makes ALL drawing apps suck and destroys any really graphical note-taking capability. Come to think of it, I'm getting more aggravated by the second at how much I miss drawing/note-taking with a stylus on my old Dell Axim. Damn it! Jobs! WHY!!
@stevox
i wonder how hard it would be for phone makers to add Wacom technology to phones. HP's last tablet (not sure about current one) had a capacitive screen for finger touch, but used Wacom tech w/ a pen for accurate writing.
@maveric101 Oh... Oh HELL no. I've gone through two Wacoms in the past year, not only are they exceedingly fragile, they're also expensive as crap. They have a patent on the battery-less pen tech that they use, so they jack up the prices on tech that should have dropped years ago.
@stevox Actually, there are pens that work with the iPhone/MBP capacitive screens...for example:
http://tenonedesign.com/stylus.php
or
http://tenonedesign.com/sketch.php
It's about 15 bucks; worth it if you want to use your iPhone for a lot of note taking...