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iPhone Keyboard Leads to Typso
jfruhlinger writes "One of the selling points of the iPhone was its revolutionary touch-screen full keyboard. But a study has shown that text messages sent from iPhones contain significantly more typso than messages from phones with other kinds of keyboards — and aren't entered any faster."
I was quite slow with my iPhone keyboard till I started to be more trusting of what the spell checker will fix automatically, there's no mention of anything like this in the article.
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
Sadly, it happened long before text on cell phones was common.
It seemed to start growing quickly out of AOL customers starting circa '94-'95, and sadly hasn't slowed down.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Apparently you missed the part of the study that says that messages sent from iPhones have more errors than messages sent from other phones. So while there may be more tolerance for bad spelling in our society, that has nothing to do with the observation that iPhones lead to more typos.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that you're going to have more errors with an interface with no tactile response. The Atari 400 was a decent computer back in the early 80's but was generally scoffed at because of its mesh-type keyboard that offered very little tactile response and made touch typing very difficult. The iPhone is the same, but worse, because there is no tactile response.
I have a hard time believing I ever would get a phone that has no tactile buttons. I have a Treo and while I can dial phone numbers by tapping the screen and can use a virtual keyboard that would require me typing on the touchscreen, I almost always use the tactile keys instead. With the iPhone, that wouldn't be an option.
It is not an issue with tactile response. The keyboard of the iPhone with its predictive correction is so good that I actually miss it on my regular desktop keyboard. The problem is that "texting" has its own dictionary that the iPhone (thankfully) doesn't recognize. So "texters" make more errors. Good I say. If the same study was done with email instead of text, you'd probably see dramatically different results. I type faster on my iPhone than I ever did on any of my Treos (have had 3 over the years).
-Vishal
So, then a more appropriate thing would be something like,
;)), the latter is spelled phonetically. Strangely (or not?), I have a really hard time reading phonetical renditions of words, as compared to typos.
"Wo creas as lnog sa u cna raed it?"
vs
hu kars so lng as u cn reed it?
Interesting. The former is made of typos I might make (and have, though not at once
Being Canadian I have a fondness for British spellings of words over American (in most cases), but the elitest attitude towards American spelling found in most English speaking countries only shows an ignorance to the history of the English language. During the 18th century and earlier, there was no such thing as a correct spelling, and many words had multiple recognized spellings. Attempts to standardize spellings began only a few decades before the US declared independence, and were not truly complete till well after. Contrary to popular belief American spellings were not dreamed up out of thin air, but were spellings that had been considered correct for centuries. Yes, American spellings were picked precisely because they were not the ones being made standard in Britian, but my point remains that Americans did not invent said spellings and don't deseve all the critism they get for them.
Reading the article, iPhone users, who have had their phones for a month, make more mistakes when typing at the same speed than do users with numeric keypads and hardware keyboards, who have been using them for... ten years?
I'm shocked.
First, I haven't seen a good description of the exact tests they did. The task at hand makes a HUGE difference in terms of how well corrective algorithms can do (terrible on phone numbers, URLS, and other arbitrary data, good on real text).
Second, the sample size was too small.
Third, so what if you make mistakes? Even more mistakes. Anyone who would type a message that matters and just hit "Send" as soon as they were done is an idiot. You go back, read, and correct an important message. And for my money, a click-to-correct algorithm is better than a cursor-to-correct one. So if you actually measured SENT message errors, perhaps the iPhone would score much better.
Fourth, your "experienced" users are how experienced? Do they slow down and take advantage of the visual keyboard feedback on arbitrary text? (Plus the fact that a keystroke registers on key release, not press?) And are they experienced at sending SMS, but you asked them to send a two-paragraph email? Or perhaps vice-versa?
Bah, probably shills for a competing phone technology.