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
I can do almost 60wpm on my Bold 9700, and I can touch-type without looking. No way would I switch to a soft keyboard.
@Ervel Flick
On my old Omnia I could touch type without looking fairly well with a software QWERTY, and I'm sure the iPhone's keyboard is much easier for touch typing without looking.
What about T9 on a (dare I say) "old skool" dial pad type phone?
@swine89 or is this really supposed to be for actual text and not just quick notes or messaging?
I find the iPhone keyboard pretty fast. But add Shapewriter into the mix and it is really speeds up. Of course there is no option for this on the poll.
The article/poll is confusing. With the picture, I picked hardware keyboard, thinking, obviously a real keyboard is faster. Then I re-read the poll and see it's just about mobile devices. In that case, I'm MUCH faster on my iPhone than on any other type of mobile keyboard. I can't stand physical keyboards actually.
@AJerman
EXACTLY my thought.
Hardware QWERTY > pen & paper (WITH A GOOD PEN) > handwriting recognition > software QWERTY
I can absolutely fly on the iPhone keyboard. Then again, I have been using one for quite a while.
I've found that it's faster to not look at the keys. My eyes will start fixating on my thumbs an I'll stumble.
Also, you don't need to hit the key with the tip of your thumb like I've seen some try, but rather just point the center of your thumb pad at the key and make contact.
I vote for out of the box....
Speech to text is my favorite.
The pen is mightier.
well this all depends.
you will never write with 2 fingers as fast as u can with 10.
plus the physical keyboard allows u to write "blind" , you dont have to watch your fingers. if u can do this on a software typer u might be faster. blindwriting, with the keys close enough so you barely have to move your fingers around. maybe get missclicks done by t10 haha xD but u would have to learn the new keyboard first.
but why even write with your hands? youll be faster speaking ....
or even better, thinking :)
@wenwalk
I agree... I'd much prefer speech input, but clearly that won't work too well in church :)
If you were 1337 like my grandma and knew how to write in shorthand you could easily push 100wpm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_shorthand
Treos don't do hardware qwerty justice.
Grab a BB Tour or Bold and try again
I have to admit that back in the day, the Newton 2100 was very good at recognizing my non-Catholic schooled, left-handed scrawl.
I like the iPhone and the multi-touch keyboard, which I think improves usability.
However, I now have a BlueTooth folding Dell keyboard, and with the BlueTooth keyboard driver for jailbroken iPhones this is the ONLY way.