6 Smartphone Keyboards Compared 161
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."
Swype. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Not only that, but he is using out of the box phones. The predictive text-correction learns as you use it. The results would be much different for a phone that sees use.
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Also the touchscreen keyboards need calibration to work best. The little quick start guide tells you how, it's easy.
I found the HTC Hero to be much more accurate after calibration when compared to before calibration.
That said, I'd still expect to see a physical keyboard to be a little faster and more accurate than a touchscreen, because you can feel the keys before you type, lending a lot to confidence which helps accuracy and speed.
Still, using them out of the box is atrocious, it doesn't reflect the capab
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Certainly. Tests of this nature are completely, totally worthless. His previous experience with other devices may actually be to the detriment of his performance with devices with dissimilar keyboard layouts.
A proper study would use a number of individuals. Each would be given a phone, tested on that phone, instructed to use that phone over the course of a week, and then tested again. Then they would move on to another phone. Each individual would be given the phones in a different order, so the perfor
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The resident teen here types so fast on her iPhone that the feedback clicks sounds like a woodpecker. Once I asked to see what she had typed and saw no typos (but several abbreviations). Hand her a Blackberry and I'll guarantee that her results would be the opposite that obtained by the keyboard scientist.
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Bingo! Been waiting for someone to point out the obvious flaw in this unscientific research.
So you noticed the flaw earlier but decided not to point it out? Maybe you thought a "me too" remark would be more useful?
The resident teen here types so fast on her iPhone that the feedback clicks sounds like a woodpecker. Once I asked to see what she had typed and saw no typos (but several abbreviations). Hand her a Blackberry and I'll guarantee that her results would be the opposite that obtained by the keyboard scientist.
I can "type" like a woodpecker on my Sony Ericsson dumb-phone - you know, the kind that has 3 (sometimes 4) letters on each button of the number pad. Using T9 predictive and both thumbs quickly becomes second nature. And once you've used it for a while it will "learn" the abbreviations and "unusual" words you regularly use and typos will be rarer than hen's teeth.
Does that make the du
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"Barely scientific"? It's barely a "test". I don't see my phone listed on there. I can use a virtual keyboard with or without vibration feedback in portrait or landscape. I can also slide the display to expose the 4-row, physical qwerty keyboard. And, now that I think about it, I wonder if I can pair this bluetooth keyboard with it......
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Hot diggity!
Swype (Score:2)
Subjective somewhat? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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These 'tests' really require a decent sample size of users and a decent sample size of devices with said screens.
No. Sorry, but no.
These 'tests' really require that you as a consumer go into a phone store, narrow down the selection based on what features you need, then grab each and every surviving model in your own sweaty paws, and spend 10 minutes with each. This will quickly narrow down the choices. Take your two finalists and spend a quality half hour with each. Thank the salesperson for his/her Jobesian patience, then buy the one that works best for you based on actually using it for a while.
If you don't plan
Blackberry (Score:3, Insightful)
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Mobile Phone [http] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]
Re:Blackberry (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
Funny, it's the exact opposite for me. Maybe it's because you're used to your BB an I'm used to my iPhone?
Really this typing test is a poor joke. I'd bet a lot that his primary phone is the one having the better score. Guess why....
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Maybe, but I had an iPod Touch for a few months before getting my Blackberry, and I never could master the iPod's soft keyboard. Took to the Blackberry keyboard like a duck takes to water.
I suspect it's just more about what's comfortable, what form of feedback you prefer, finger size, dexterity, etc. I just like to be able to feel keys under my fingers, and I have trouble finding keys based on sight because my fingers cover up too much.
I'm just glad the market has both. We're both happy. LOL.
"barely scientific"? Not even that. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It tells us how quickly one person adapts to a sample new input systems. It's a data point, and he even described the methodology allowing others to repeat, so yeah, I think it counts as barely scientific.
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Agreed.
The author didn't even tell us which keyboard he used on the Android devices. There's a very big difference between the vertical-orientation kb and the horizontal-orientation one. I can't type worth anything on the vertical, but can blaze along fairly quickly on the horizontal.
Yes but the vertical ones only take one hand, Which means I'm more likely to be able to avoid trees while typing sql statements
YMMV (Score:2)
Hardly a Significant Test (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but one person typing a short message, is not going to tell us anything significant. Furthermore we don't know his background (e.g. what types of phones/PDA's he's used in the past), or how "fat" his fingers are. At best all we know is what phone he's best at right now. The performance of the same person when they first used the phone compared to that same person after owning that type of phone for a year will differ significantly.
If someone plans to type on their phone enough for the difference of a few seconds to matter, then they really need to compare the phones in person themselves. A significantly larger sample of people ideally who have never used a phone with a full keyboard may give some idea of which styles tend to work better on average, but that's about the most information you'll get. Whether it works best (and is comfortable) for you is something you need to try yourself.
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iUsed (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFA:
I used each phone in its default mode, as it would present to a brand-new user out of the box. I counted one error for each wrong word in the main text and for each wrong character in the phone number, web address, username and password. In every test I tried not to look at the screen and typed as quickly as I could, allowing the phone to correct any errors. I’m not the world’s fastest typist, so I’m sure some of you could easily beat the absolute times, but as a comparison between devices it’s reasonably valid.
There's a LOT of use of the word "I" in there. Could it be that he went through an exhaustive process to determine which phone met *gasp* his own personal preferences?
Well, Paul, that's fantastic. In fact, I happen to agree with you. But you haven't settled the "debate" for anyone but yourself. I think most (but NOT ALL) people would likely agree that a hard keyboard is really tough to beat when you want to type in a lot of text. I know typing anything into my wife's iPod Touch is, for my massively meaty paws, an exercise in utter frustration. I think entering anything more than a URL in it should be given a "circle of hell" difficulty level. And I've really honestly tried to make it work. For those apps that support rotation, the wide-format keyboard is just barely adequate, but WHY DOESN'T SAFARI SUPPORT THIS!?!?!?
(breathes) But I digress.
I've seen people who can absolutely whiz-bang on soft keyboards. I don't understand it, but they can. I've also seen people who (believe it or not) do not need to enter any major Tolstoy works into their mobile phone browser on a routine basis. For those people, a hard keyboard is an utter waste of what could be useful screen.
Personally, you can have my Blackberry 8310 smartphone when you pry it from my cold, dead thumbs. Or replace it with a newer Blackberry Curve (oooh! shiny! 3G please!) or something else with a hard keyboard in a similar form factor. I don't like the postage stamp of a screen, but I enter text. A lot. And I need a physical keyboard until voice recognition stops getting me visits from HR when "I like your idea" gets transcribed as "I'll lick you my dear". I also want something durable, and slideouts seem rather breakable in my big meaty paws.
So the wide-candybar format with a postage stamp screen is a reasonable compromise. I've been carrying it for about a year and a half now, and while there's always the "wow, if I could get a bigger screen I could have seen that", there's constantly the "oh, dear, I gotta type a whole paragraph, thank FSM for this real keyboard - wonder twin thumbs, ACTIVATE!" I can type about 1/4 to 1/2 as fast as I can on a desktop keyboard, special characters are just one extra keypress unless they are truly bizarro ones, and it just gets done what I need to get done quickly.
J. L. Slimfingers might be able to throw an iPhone in the air and type "Moby Dick" on it while in flight before it lands. For him, a large screen format is an excellent choice.
D. Elly Catflower might keep it in a shockproof case and only bring it out with great ceremony and lay it on a safety pad of fine Corinthian leather before using it. For her, a slideout is ideal. Lots of screen, full-on keyboard, and they'll treat it right.
Me? Big meaty paws, a tendency to bash it against stuff, and a need to enter a lot of text. I got the Blackberry 8310, put it in a big rubbery slipcover, and put that inside an 8800-style leather case. It's at a year and a half, I don't dread typing on it, and it's still going strong with about 2 days of battery life between charges. I haven't even managed to scratch the screen (though the stick-on screen protector helps). I think I chose well.
For me.
Not for everyone else.
physical keyboard == (Score:2)
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Really? Last time I looked at something like a Blackberry Curve or Bold, half of the device is the keyboard, therefore the screen has to be made half the size. Nokia have some flip out keyboards, but they make the phone incredibly thick and they can break easily.
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My $.02... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've owned two Nokias with physical keyboards (6800 and 6820) and a BlackBerry (Curve 8330--not the best) and an iPhone, and I prefer the iPhone's virtual keyboard by far. Not so much for speed, though some basic testing by me shows they're all comparable, but for ease. The 6800 [htmhell.com] is large with plastic between the nicely-rounded keys and it's very easy to hit the right one. The 6820 [juliepenner.com] is a bit smaller but the keys are also nicely rounded and typing on that is pretty easy. Both also have dedicated buttons for numbers and some punctuation--hyphen, comma, period, slash, single quote, and more are all primary buttons. Their layouts also closely mimic a PC keyboard with comma, period, slash, semicolon, quote, and equals in roughly the same spots as on a regular keyboard.
The BlackBerry's keys are smaller and closer together and firmer than either Nokia and I find I've got to press on them with a thumbnail or the bony part of a finger to get them to register and not mash more than one key at a time, and there are no number or punctuation keys AT ALL [wordpress.com] which makes typing just about anything quite a pain.
The iPhone only shows letters or numbers/punctuation but since it's virtual the secondary and tertiary buttons are big and easy to find, not like the tiny glyphs you get from sticking two images on one physical key. But the thing I like most about virtual keys is that it only takes a very light tough to register a press, and the clickable area is very large, so typing with the biggest, roundest, softest part of your thumb is a cinch. And because of this, it is by far the easiest to use with one hand. (Though the split-keyboard Nokias are pretty much out of the running in this area, but the BB is similar in size and shape.)
But anyway, that's just my experience and preference. All that matters is what works best for you.
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and there are no number or punctuation keys AT ALL [wordpress.com] which makes typing just about anything quite a pain.
Sure there are, in fact they are screen-printed on the actual keys. The number keys share function with W-E-R, S-D-F, and Z-X-C. You just have to press the ALT key. Either press-and-release ALT then press the key you want (thumb typing), or hold ALT and press the key you want (multiple-finger typing).
Granted, having real keys for those functions would be nicer, but they work fine.
Interestingly, I have the exact opposite experience to yours - I can whoosh along with text using the big meatiness of my thumbs on the Blackberry keyboard (I have yet to mash more than one key at a time, and I can literally use the meat of my thumb to type if I choose), but put me in front of the iPhone/iPodTouch soft keyboard and I have to use the tip of my right pinkie - it's the only thing small enough to accurately hit the key I want and backed up by enough precision, and even then I miss a significant percentage of the time.
But anyway, that's just my experience and preference. All that matters is what works best for you.
Exactly. Each person needs to physically experience the phone they want before they buy it if they expect to use it for serious data entry. Otherwise, you run into situations like this one - you have a clear preference for one keyboard for a specific reason, and I have a clear preference for another keyboard for the exact same reason. The "hardness" of the BB keyboard prevents me from pressing more than one key at a time, and the tactile feedback is, to me, utterly necessary. I don't want to have to look at my phone to type everything.
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>> and there are no number or punctuation keys AT ALL [wordpress.com] which makes typing just about anything quite a pain.
> Sure there are, in fact they are screen-printed on the actual keys.
Right. I meant, they're there, but the Nokias have them as distinct keys--A-Z, 0-9 and eight punctuation keys. 50 buttons on the Nokias versus only 35 on the BB. So things like comma and period and hyphen (which I use all the time) are one press, not two. (And other handy things, like = and % are REALLY hidden
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The Curve is no different. SYM key brings up a character map, then Y or P for those symbols, respectively.
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Agreed, the % is a particular pain at times. :)
I've gotten used to the comma and period and the others, it's one thumb for alt and the other for the key. I don't really find it slows me down, but it all boils down to what you get used to, I suppose.
Why physical keyboard is better (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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Yes, but generally smartphones with an on-screen keyboard have a display twice as big.
Why the iPhone keyboard is better (Score:2)
This does not work on my Nexus One (android), but I'm not sure about the other platforms.
Another alternative, which is probably faster than any of the tested keyboards is swype, where you just draw a line which represents the word. There is a public beta at http://beta.swype.co [swype.com]
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That is not chording and it doesn't improve speed unless the typist makes those specific errors.
Yes, Barely Scientific (Score:2, Insightful)
Virtual Keyboard - glass or plastic screen? (Score:3, Interesting)
All virtual keyboards are NOT created equal.
One of the primary differences is the backing material of the touch screen. The cheaper phones utilize a plastic backing on the touchscreen, this plastic will bend, warp and cause 'typos' even if your finge is precisely where it's supposed to be. Glass does not flex, or warp - but is more expensive. This is why the iPhone gives such a superior performance on the virtual keyboard, as they have a glass backing.
I think many of the problems with virtual keyboards is due to the cheaper touchscreens utilize the flexible plastic backing behind the flexible membrane - thus adding distortion to the pressure point matrix - resulting in typo's that are indeed the "phone's fault".
It would be interesting to see this sort of study conducted with external keyboards, virtual (glass) and virtual (plastic) keyboards.
I'm switching to the Droid for the option of not only abandoning my cheap plastic backing on my touchscreen LG Dare; but also because I'll have the option of the slide out keyboard.
don't mod me redundant, but (Score:2, Insightful)
What a waste of time (Score:2)
So, the author decides to post about experiences with those six devices, leaving out MANY other devices. The old Palm Treo is very dated at this point, but still good for comparison purposes. How about the Palm Pre, or any of the other lesser known phones that have a keyboard? You may as well just go into your local hardware store and compare surge protectors and then claim it is news, without mentioning that a hardware store isn't going to give enough of a selection to make any sort of comparison m
Get an external keyboard if you hate the phone one (Score:2, Insightful)
Missing option: handwriting! (Score:2)
I have an Android phone, and while the on-screen keyboard is okay, it does have severe disadvantages (as explained by others above).
The thing that I miss the most is definitely handwriting recognition -- it allows a small device to have a relatively big UI during input, it is not affected by regional layout differences, and it's fairly easy to extend and personalise by the individual user. TealScript is a prime example, really, doing full-screen transparent handwriting capture for any application.
Too bad mo
Lame (Score:2)
Re:Debate (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the people who prefer not to have a physical keyboard are called iPhone users.
Don't look now, but there are millions of us.
Re:Debate (Score:4, Funny)
I could have been first post but my phone keyword is horrible!
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I love my iPhone as much as the next guy, but I was a way faster typer on my Blackberry, even a year after switching. Its reality. If I could have the appstore / iphone SDK / general UI quality and a real keyboard? please please please...
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That's called "cognitive dissonance"; look it up sometime.
Oblig Iphone mention (Score:2)
Ah yes, the obligitary Iphone mention.
Why pick the Iphone? By that logic, there are billions of phones without a real keyboard. But it's ludicrous to claim that therefore, people prefer not having a keyboard, all things being equal.
You could only test this if there were two phones, equal in all ways (including price), except that one had a real keyboard, and the other did not. The Iphone adds nothing to this discussion, no more than my 5800, or indeed my old Motorola V980, or the dumb phone I had before tha
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Don't look now but there are TENS of millions of us with physical keyboards. You're the niche, not us.
Re:Debate (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
I've done remote access sysadmin work from my iPhone plenty of times and it was never a hassle at all. While I originally preferred physical keyboards, after having an iPhone for the last 7 months or so, I actually prefer the keyboard because it only shows one symbol on each key (and you hit a button on the side to change what the keyboard shows), which makes it much easier to find what I'm looking for instead of having to look for less frequently used buttons where there are 3 symbols all in different col
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The reason to prefer the tactile feel of a keyboard is tied entirely to not being a total n00b.
Once you know where the keys are, you no longer need to look to find them (and thus don't care what they look like). When you're not looking at the keyboard, you're looking at either the screen or the document you're transcribing, and usually typing much faster than if you were looking at the keyboard.
Of course, for this to be even a remote possibility, you MUST have a physical keyboard, so you can feel your way t
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Keep the following in mind while relying on sound from your phone to tell you when you've pressed a key:
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Where did I say that anyone claiming to prefer a touchscreen keyboard can't remember where keys are? I was refuting the argument you made, while you're putting words in my mouth.
You specifically talked about you MUST have a physical keyboard so that you can type without looking at it - just because you used a different wording doesn't change what you said.
As for your comments at the end about the iPhone, jailbreaking fixes the locked down aspect (and it's dirt simple to do), and if you bothered to USE one for more than a minute, you might realize that you don't need a physical keyboard as badly as you think you do. Also, (again proving your lack of experience with an iPhone), you
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How should we interpret the results of this barely-scientific test? First, physical keyboards would appear still to be significantly faster and more accurate than on-screen keyboards, and second, fancy new screen technologies offering haptic feedback don’t necessarily improve typing speed and accuracy, although they feel nicer in use.
My generalization: Iphone users sacrifice function for form. Period. I suppose that is their choice, but it is still appropriate to call a hat a hat. I maintain that arbitrary individuals have a more difficult time writing things out (be it emails, IM's, SMS, twitter, restaraunt reviews or anything else that's drug us away from the 10-key pad) on an Iphone or other on-screen sol
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Some of us use our phones for serious work like remote sysadmin tasks and document editing (to name just two)
Such folks as yourself might be interested in my signature spam :-)
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Some of us use our phones for serious work like remote sysadmin tasks and document editing (to name just two).
I find it difficult to believe when people say they're doing "serious work" on the tidgy little keyboards on netbooks. The idea of someone claiming to be doing "serious work" on a smartphone just blows my mind.
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iPhone users
buy a netbook and tether.
Sing it with me, "One of these things is not like the others..."
Yes, I'm sure the Eris can tether, but not all of us want to lug around a netbook for the occasional support email.
I respect your choice of phones for your usage pattern, and I'm sure it works great. For you.
PS: "another" point of failure to cope with, for me, would be to lug a netbook AND a phone AND depend on a cable or Bluetooth to connect the two. Battery goes dead on one or the other, I'm screwed. One integrated phone with a usable key
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> PS: "another" point of failure to cope with, for me, would be to lug a netbook AND
> a phone AND depend on a cable or Bluetooth to connect the two.
Tsk. If you had an iPhone, you wouldn't tether, because that's simply Not Allowed. When you defile an iPhone by jailbreaking and tethering it, it makes Steve Jobs sad.
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Re:Debate (Score:5, Insightful)
three words: (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:three words: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Slashdot works fine on my Nokia
Maddox, is that you?
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone [thebestpag...iverse.net]
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Nope, he's just one of over a billion people who choose Nokia.
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The days when only so-called "smartphones" could run web browsers are long gone - for years, any normal phone can, so if we're talking about viewing Slashdot, that's the relevant market. And the Iphone is less than 5% of the phone market.
Yes, you get 25% if you artificially restrict the category to the Iphone and a few other models, but then you might as well say that the Iphone has 100% of the Iphone market. (Can you give me a definition of smartphone that includes the original Iphone, but doesn't include
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Judging by the mac fanboy population, they seem to be having their cake and eating it too. You guys (assuming you are a member of that subset based on your user name, if not, apologies) don't seem to be going away anyway. I'd wager their corporate overlords are quite pleased.
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Works great on my HTC Ozone...I gotta have a physical keyboard, I can't stand touchscreen keyboards.
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Physical keyboard AND the ability to read and respond to /. comments (from ANYWHERE).
Three reasons this comment was...
Posted from my AT&T Wireless Blackberry Bold 9000
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Luckily Slashdot is pretty much entirely broken on the iPhone (still!), so this issue hasn't come up.
What!? This is news to me and my iPhone 3G S. Are there a couple of annoyances, sure, but I have no problem reading stories here, unhiding comments, etc exactly as I would on a full computer.
Even reading nested comments isn't painful, because the deeper the nesting, the smaller the font is on my iPhone, so I just double-tap the comment block to magnify and auto-fit the comment up the width of the screen.
So there's no iPhone-specific Slashdot layout, but 9 times out of 10 I switch a site back to its normal l
Re: Translucent Onscreen Keyboards (Score:2)
Translucent Keyboard
I don't like it as much as my old Droid and Palm physical keyboards but it does let me see more of the screen when using an on-screen keyboard by letting me see THROUGH the keyboard.
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But if you ditch a physical keyboard you can use that to increase your screen real estate.
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Anywhere you could put a keyboard you could also put a screen. Slide out keyboard => slide out screen. Dual screens!
There is a lot to be said for tactile feedback though.
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screen real estate.
There is a compromise: use a stylus! That way the virtual keyboard is not only smaller, but more accurate.
I'd like to see a comparison of stylus vs finger screen-typing. (A proper comparison, not like in TFA.)
If multi-touch is really so important, you could build a screen with both resistive and capacitive digitisers.
And don't forget to compare things like Palm's Graffiti.
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Real keyboard wanted! (Score:2)
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
Yes-- complete agreement here.
What I really want is a full-size keyboard as a detachable accessory. When I'm using the phone as just a phone, or for most simple browsing, I don't need to carry a keyboard around, but when I do need one, I'd like a full-sized one, not the little toys.
(It doesn't have to have all the useless keys that clutter up most computer keyboards these days-- just the old QWERTY ones.)
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so get a bluetooth keyboard and a jailbroken iphone...
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The predictive text learns as I use the device and I can type incredibly fast on it. Lengthy correspondence is not a problem.
It's just my preference, but now I would never use a physical keyboard. The keys are tiny and fixed, whereas on my BB they are large and can change to match whatever input I happen to need. (letters, caps, symbols, web signs)
Just my two cents.
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I'm now a proud owner of a HTC Hero android phone. I absolutely love the way you can type on it. It does not have two letters on each soft key - but the idea is more or less the same. If I mistype one or two characters I just select the right word that is displayed on top (most of the time it is the default). The keyboard auto-adapts to the input required and it is relatively easy to switch languages. web-addresses can be a bit of a hassle though, since auto-predict is useless for most pages. The input seem
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As of last night, I'm an even happier owner of a Sprint Hero Android phone, because we finally have independent 2.1 builds that really, truly work -- real 2.6.29 kernel, GPS, bluetooth, camera, and all. OK, for some inane reason, the LED under the trackball still doesn't quite work properly... but then again, it never worked *at all* with HTC & Sprint's official 1.5 firmware, so flakiness is still a net improvement over the official status quo.
I'm back to being happy that it doesn't have a physical keyb
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Hey, thanks, it is only displayed in the settings as "compact querty". OK, it's a bit deep down and for some reasons not in the keyboards settings, but I'll try it out, I can always turn the display in the few cases that it does not suffice.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'd rather have a choice: not carry a keyboard when I don't need one for maximum portability, and take along a small, or medium, or large, bluetooth keyboard, when I think I will.
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Any physical keyboard would have been so mu