6 Smartphone Keyboards Compared

Barence writes "A debate that crops up time and again is whether it's better to have a dedicated keyboard on your smartphone or whether an on-screen keyboard with text correction is adequate. Some phones with screen-based keyboards have started to provide tactile feedback, either using an ultra-quick spin of their vibration alert or, like the BlackBerry Storm2, using clever piezo-electric technology to simulate the feel of a button press. But which system works best? PC Pro's Paul Ockendon gathered six of the most popular handsets around and put them through a timed typing test to see which proved quickest and most typo-free."

Comments

Swype.

[Karganeth]

I downloaded swype for my Nexus One and haven't looked back. It's so much faster than the old virtual keyboard for "hunt and peck". The videos of it don't do it justice. It's much easier and faster than the old ways.

Re:Debate

[eln]

I prefer not to have a keyboard on my smartphone because typing on a tiny keyboard, whether physical or not, is an enormous pain in the ass and I try to avoid it whenever possible. Since a tiny physical keyboard is only marginally less painful to use than the on-screen one, I'd prefer not to waste space with one.

Bias?

[mewsenews]

The author acknowledges that this test is barely scientific, but I'm left wondering why he didn't disclose which phone he actually uses day-to-day. The muscle memory he's built up using his primary smartphone should give a huge bias to the results.

Subjective somewhat?

[guruevi]

Depending on what you're used to on existing devices and who is typing, these results will vary wildly. I'm used to a physical keyboard on my phone so I have trouble whenever I try to use something else. I tried tactile feedback screens once and the vibrations felt funny making me go even slower.

I've got a really flat, sensitive keyboard with repeat all the way up and key delay all the way down and a trackball mouse. Most people that try to type on it or use my mouse can't because the keyboard is too sensitive and they don't know what to do with the mouse (some try to move the whole unit, some just look at it and seem to poke at it). I however can type faster on it than any other keyboard and be precise in even difficult 3D shooters.

These 'tests' really require a decent sample size of users and a decent sample size of devices with said screens. Not everybody implements the on-screen keyboard in the same way either.

Re:Debate

[Anonymous Coward]

I could have been first post but my phone keyword is horrible!

"barely scientific"? Not even that.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Keyboarding, even within the context of a high quality desktop keyboard, is not a natural act. I requires nontrivial practice to achieve speed and accuracy with low mental overhead.

Smartphone keyboards are ghastly little things, whose virtues lie more or less exclusively in being small enough to fit on smartphones. Each different one requires substantial practice and much of that practice isn't transferable between systems.

Having one person try them all for a few minutes is line noise, it tells us nothing.

three words:

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

screen real estate.

i have a moto droid and while the onscreen keyboard is awesome and the predictive text works great, it takes up about 75% of the screen. if i am on a site (like /.) where i am going to be reading and typing with regularity it is nice to have the option to slide out a physical keyboard and get the screen back.

Re:three words:

[eln]

Luckily Slashdot is pretty much entirely broken on the iPhone (still!), so this issue hasn't come up.

Re:Debate

[clang_jangle]

If someone hammers out enough email that having a physical keyboard is a make-or-break proposition, just buy a netbook and tether.

Speaking as one of the many millions for whom a physical keyboard is definitely a must, email is not the only reason to need a keyboard. Some of us use our phones for serious work like remote sysadmin tasks and document editing (to name just two). Both types of phones exist because different people have different needs and preferences.

Re:Blackberry

[natehoy]

Absolutely. My wife, she of the toothpick-sized fingers, does pretty well on her iPod Touch. She prefers my Blackberry keyboard for any sort of serious data entry, but then again she has little need for that on a phone - that's what her netbook is for.

Personally, I can't type three consecutive letters on the iPod Touch or an iPhone without screwing it up. But I can burn through text like a sonofabitch with my Blackberry.