iPhone Experience: The keyboard

My iPhone keyboarding has taken leaps and bounds beyond my old Treo skills in just four days (without too much time spend just playing with the keyboard, I mean there is a lot to play with here).

I was a bit wary with all the concern about this. But a couple things make this easy. First, the predictive typing works great (though not as great as I thought from reading), and secondly, and less talked about, is the fact that if you don't life your finger from the key you have chosen, you can move it to the correct letter.

I've moved on to two-thumbs with incredible speed. I can crank out emails faster than I ever could on my Treo (thanks to those two tricks), and am also becoming very comfortable with this new way of typing. Sure beats texting on a regular number pad.

Even in portrait mode, I don't even see this as an issue anymore. I've been doing a lot of demos for friends and strangers (of course) and this is one of the first questions that comes up. With my newfound skill, I tend to blow them away and change their minds straight away (and I do have big fingers). It also helps to type flat fingered, and then just jam. I'm not totally convinced about using the "Force" method, but this will not be holding me back, or make me wish for my tactile Treo keyboard anytime soon. The lack of a keyboard and that awesome display, have become benefits, not drawbacks. It will be interesting to take a survey in a few weeks to see how others are doing. I'll bet this will become a non-issue for most people, except for those that just can't live without their blackberries. Now, if we can just get that Exchange and Blackberry server support, we'll be in high heaven.

i have big hands and big fingers. i can easily palm a basketball and i weight about 220 pounds.

I spent a year and a half typing on the rather 'large' slide-out keyboard on a T-Mobile MDA. I've spent two days typing on the iPhone. My iPhone typing speed and accuracy already exceeds that of my MDA. not having to physically push a button down lets you move way faster and with even a small amount of practice i can type full-on with the iPhone and make very few mistakes that aren't auto-corrected. it really is amazing.

another advantage is that on my MDA, you have to take you eyes off the keys and onto the screen to check what your typing, but with the iPhone you get the huge inflated key stroke confirmation with every letter press—this actually makes it quite a bit more useable.

of course, i could probably type even faster in horizontal mode, due to bigger keys and also better ergonomics, it seems silly that apple didn't makes this possible since they already made such a keyboard for safari, but i'm sure one will be coming in a update, sooner or later. in the mean time i'll be tapping away.

I actually am in love with the keyboard. I just dont pay attention to exactly what it is typing... As long as i do that its amazing. Im even using both thumbs! By the way I am posting this from my iPhone :-)

Ya the speaker phone sounds like your on a bad speaker phone. It is annoying to people that I have used it with. I wonder if I got a bum speakerphone?

I wish it was louder as well

At #7, Kai:

You had a great point right until you started quoting numbers. First, how do you know it's 96% accurate? Are you actually counting characters?

Second, and this really bothers me because it's pulled out of thin air, where do you get "30-50 words per minute" from? If you can prove to me you can achieve, say, 40 WPM (with 96% accuracy), the midpoint of your estimate, after one month with your iPhone (clock starts today), I'll give you--I swear to God--$50. All you have to do is YouTube it and reply to this comment with the link. Find some way to prove it's you.

The reason I say this is because studies have shown (http://www.readi.info/TypingSpeed.pdf -- warning, opens PDF) that the "average typist only achieves between 38 and 40 WPM" -- ON A REGULAR KEYBOARD. Most people simply lack the dexterity to type any faster.

I'm serious about my challenge--which is specific to Kai, I should mention to the chagrin of the internet community. So if you're Mozart meets thumbs, have at it.

Good luck.

Re: phone functions...

I'm still waiting for the masters of efficiency at AT&T to activate my iPhone after a 24 hour delay, so I've yet to play with my own iPhone.

However I did play around with one of the demo models in the Apple store and the phone worked fine. The one thing that didn't work well in that setting was the headset. Although the store seemed relatively quiet, the headset's mic seemed to pick up a lot of background noise that interfered with having a clear conversation... so much so that I resorted to disconnecting the cable and just using the phone normally.

I'll reserve judgment until I can actually test mine in a real world setting.

My only other negative experience was when testing a demo unit at an AT&T store. While on wifi everything worked well, but another model that was on EDGE for some reason displayed web pages so slowly as to be unusable.

Once again, I'll reserve judgment til I get to try out my own phone under typical conditions.

To answer someone's question, the PHONE part is amazing. I'm having so much fun playing with contacts and all that stuff.

I have large hands too, so those of you that are concerned a out finger size and the keyboard, worry not. This whole thing is amazing. Peoples biggest complaint is how many mistakes you make with the keyboard. What those people don't realize is that you have to let yourself make the mistaes! The iPhone corrects everything and not in an annoying way like t9. Its perfect.

@30 - Dan

The phone is great. Sorry, but it's just kind of assumed.

Last night (after no more than 2 horus of ownign the thing), I was messing around with my iPhone,a nd someone called me. I was listening with headphones, and I was surprised to be alerted a call was coming in. I looked at my phone and knew what to do - I accepted the call. My friend started talking, I started talking, etc., etc... I finally asked, do you notice anything weird? I didn't believe in the built-in headphone mic. She said, well, it kinda sounds like you're on speakerphone, but not as bad. I asked her if she was having trouble hearing me. "No."

And our conversation went on without a hitch...

There's your phone review. It just works. I mean, if they couldn't at least get the PHONE part right, why bother?

Here I go again...against the grain and on the side of "duh!"

Landscape keyboard sucks.

Yeah, I said it. Ya know why?

It takes up too much damned space on the screen. Two lines of what you'd type would be visible. Two. Lines.

Just type people. Just type.

I was able to type the preamble of the us constitution with two thumbs in less than 3 mins...with *3 mistakes*

What i don't understand is tis; the effort it takes to "rally the troops" to "fix" the landscape "problem" is at least an order of magnitude higher than just typing with abandon.

The only downside is that I'm gonna start typing on my computer that way then being all mad when my typing is full of errors :)

#36, I logged on to type the exact same suggestion! I love this device, and i'm sure we'll all get better on the keyboard. But if enough people give feedback on this -- and request the landscape keyboard (as an option) across all apps, many users (especially guys with big fingers) will be much happier.

I have to believe Apple will listen and add this. But many users won't even know it exists, because you first have to be in Safari, in landscape mode, then click on a text field (etc.).

So if many of us send feedback, hopefully this will be addressed ASAP.