Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Peripherals, Productivity, Apple, iPhone
Study: iPhone's keyboard two times slower than other phones
I don't know if you were on the TUAW Talkcast Aftershow with us last Thursday, but if you were, you would have heard a member of the TUAW staff (who shall remain nameless) saying something very forceful about the iPhone keyboard: "Let's face it-- it sucks."Yes, for all the "oh, it gets better when you learn it" and "you just have to trust it" comments, it seems that the naughty secret lying in the heart of every iPhone owner out there is that iPhone keyboard is not the easiest to type on. And now Science has confirmed it: a new study says the iPhone's keyboard is two times slower than phones with QWERTY keyboards on them. The study examined people (who didn't own iPhones-- more on that in a second) sending fixed length text messages both on their own phones (half QWERTY and half numeric) and on the iPhone, and QWERTY was the fastest. The iPhone keyboard took twice as long (the numeric keypad took about the same time as the iPhone), and participants had more errors on the iPhone than their own phones.
But iPhone stalwarts, worry not, because that "it gets better when you learn it" excuse still holds true-- none of these people were actually "used" to an iPhone. If we really wanted a completely objective idea of iPhone speed vs. QWERTY (or numeric) speed, we'd have to get an iPhone owner to match up against another owner, both experienced with using their phones. How would that pan out?
Oh, and I should put the TUAW staff member's comment in context-- we were talking about the fact that the iPhone doesn't support using an actual Bluetooth keyboard. Compared to the no-button keyboard on the iPhone, it seems our staffer would rather have a full sized QWERTY keyboard hooked up via Bluetooth any day.
Thanks, Wako!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Alex Keeny said 7:24PM on 8-18-2007
I was really impressed with the iPhone keyboard myself. I haven't typed on a phone with a qwerty keyboard, so I can't comment on that, but I have typed on numeric keyboards and whether it's on predictive or normal, the iPhone is so much faster in my own use. It's obviously not as fast as a dedicated keyboard, but that's to be expected; you only have two thumbs to type with instead of 10 fingers (8 if you don't count thumbs on the space bar).
The only problem I've had with my iPhone's keyboard is that sometimes the phone will act somewhat laggy and so that can throw of your speed.
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Mystic said 7:35PM on 8-18-2007
Are you kidding me!!!? You have to be mental not to be able to type on the iPhone keyboard. Personally, I can type twice as fast as I could on the Treo or Sidekick, and when I put it on a table and use two fingers, even faster.
What a bunch of loons. Too bad they keep on using the iPhone and bitching about it instead of returning it and getting something they won't bitch about.
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minimalist said 7:51PM on 8-18-2007
I’d say such studies are fairly useless. This is all so subjective. It’s all in what people are used to.
Having never owned a smartphone I quickly adapted to the iPhone. I have fat fingers and I can type 30-40 words per minute on the iPhone’s narrow keyboard with two thumbs (strangely, when taking the same test at iphonetypingtest.com I found I only got 20-30 words per minute on the supposedly easier to use widescreen keyboard. I ‘d probably get used to it with time but I have really adapted quite well to the narrow keyboard and prefer using it.
A friend visited last weekend and I tried out his Treo while he tried out my iPhone. I was lucky to get 10-20 words per minute because the keys had travel distance and I had to be more deliberate in the way I pressed them. With the iPhone I think half my speed comes from the way you I can just let my fingers dance across the screen with a feather light touch. My friend is also is a big guy with large hands and he says he also dislikes the keyboard on the Treo and felt more at home on the iPhone in just the first 20 minutes.
Of all the things I’d like to change about the iPhone I don’t think the keyboard even rates in the top 20.
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Jonathan Allen said 8:20PM on 8-18-2007
You can always go to www.iphonetypingtest.com to check for yourself. I am significantly faster on my iPhone than my treo or Nokia e62. With the iPhone I scored 48 WPM.
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Thayne Miller said 8:08PM on 8-18-2007
here's another vote that the survey results are incorrect. I've owned PDAs ever since their inception with the newton, palm, windows CE, WM5.0, and now the iphone. I've used keyboards of all kinds, both qwerty, T9, fitaly, and software. I can honestly say the iphone's keyboard is the fastest keyboard I could ask for. I used to be able to type pretty quick on a T9 motorolla, but you can't do symbols very easily. The iphone makes it a synch. In fact, when I show off my iphone, people are always quick to point out how impressed they are with how fast I can type on it! You don't know how many times I've heard, "wow, that keyboard is much faster than my [insert cell phone here]."
You can make a survey say just about anything if you survey the right people. I challenge anyone who thinks they are fast on their PDA of choice to beat me in a type-off on my iPhone!
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Allister said 8:24PM on 8-18-2007
Another vote for that study being pointless. The TRUE test would be for the test subjects not to have ever used EITHER type of keyboard. Duh!
Must have been a dearth of Apple-bashing lately for someone to have to stoop this low.
In other news, grandparents find rotary dial phones "much easier" to use than Skype.
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David G said 9:27PM on 8-18-2007
I'm so tired of this. The keyboard is fine. I just got finished typing several text messages, and thinking about how much I've gotten used to the keyboard. Then I came home and read this. It's silly. No, it's not as fast as the iMac keyboard I'm typing on, but it's great for something so small and multi-functional. I wouldn't trade my iPhone for 10 Treos!!!
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Andrew Dixon said 9:18PM on 8-18-2007
I also have the Iphone and find it really easy to type on.
Yes trust it and it will be great to you. I can Type as fast on that as i can on my keyboard.
And i am not a slow typer.
Just take time, I guess be a teenager meens i text more so i have more practice, but i am a two thumb texter and i have it down.
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MacBookOwner said 9:19PM on 8-18-2007
"Science has confirmed it" ?
Did you guys even read the study parameters?
20 people, all experienced texters with other systems? 1 minute to practice on the new iPhone?
Lets do some homework, guys.
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Reg Muffet said 9:27PM on 8-18-2007
This writeup should at least have pointed out the flaws of a very poor study.
Apart from the inherent bias in intending to prove a conclusion before even starting, the time periods they gave were bordering on the ridiculous.
The time given for the "improvement over time" was... 30 minutes!
Other flaws:
Frequent texters on their existing phones
No participants owned an iPhone
Fast & accurate on their existing phones
Just as fast on numeric (T9) keypad as on the iPhone
In other words: the study gave people with years of experience on a existing device a foreign device, and timed them - cold - on how quickly they could enter text with it.
It proves nothing more than that the iPhone text entry is quite different from existing phones and requires getting used to.
The study says nothing about the result of what happens WHEN you get used to it, which most iPhone owners say is to greatly increase their speeds.
Anyway, the last word should really belong to Justine Ezarik, she of the AT&T 300 page "bill in a box" representing 30,000 text messages.
She reported on the MacBreak Weekly podcast (at 6:07) that she found a Treo better for texting while driving (NO! DON'T DO THIS!) because of the anchor marks of the keys, but that she was "so much faster" on the iPhone.
You know, I think she must have had longer than 30 mins to get used to it...
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Hmmmm said 9:30PM on 8-18-2007
So.....
this guy apparently doesn't seem to have a problem. And since the video was posted on June 30th 2007... I'm assuming he'd only had what, a few hours with it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wSymuhuBZwM
i dont really see the iPhone keyboard as a problem. Particularly after having used it.
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Richard said 9:35PM on 8-18-2007
In other news...'science' showed that when comparing the speeds of people walking on foot verses those riding a bike, who had never learned how to ride one previous to the experiment, showed that walking is by far the fastest mode of travel.
With that said, I would still like the option to use other bluetooth keyboards that fold up.
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MacBookOwner said 9:33PM on 8-18-2007
Reg Muffet,
exactly..if they are going to just reguritate what some ZDNet blogger regurgitates about some study they heard about, why bother? This is TUAW for fucks sake-they should be contacting the guys who DID the study, and ask about the methodology. IF they even bothered to visit their website, they would even find a whole FAQ the study group had to put up defending their study.
You know, homework :p
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sterling said 9:36PM on 8-18-2007
That's kind of like saying a qwerty keyboard is better than dvorak by having a bunch of qwerty trained typists try dvorak for 30 minutes. Pretty stupid.
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achal soni said 9:38PM on 8-18-2007
i dont really care about the studies. i was scared about typing on the iphone myself, thinking that i would be really slow, and the thin virtual keyboard wasnt helping. but when i went to apple store and typed on it was amazing. i was typing so fast i couldnt believe it. it was so fast and the keyboard was so smart, that i know i couldnt do the same on a treo or blackberry
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alf said 9:48PM on 8-18-2007
Yes, the study was obviously confounded by experience.
However, pitting people with an iphone against people with a QWERTY phone isn't a much better solution. What you would want is people who have never used either, to be tested repeatedly in a longitudinal design (type a particular sentences at T1, then again (or with different sentence) at T2 in 2 weeks or something like that).
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Joe said 9:53PM on 8-18-2007
This is a flawed study. You need to perform the test with people who have never used either a qwerty (thumb) keyboard or virtual (iPhone) keyboard. People have experience (decade or more) with thumb keyboards. Redo the test in 10 years.
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Dave said 9:59PM on 8-18-2007
The iPhone keyboard is remarkable - I simply love it. I type VERY fast with it and with remarkable accuracy.
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King Fysel said 10:40PM on 8-18-2007
"Two times slower" doesn't make sense. You mean half as fast.
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Joel said 11:57PM on 8-18-2007
I was worried that typing on the iPhone would be a problem but I type fast as hell on my iPhone! I seriously think I can type as fast on my iPhone as I do on a keyboard and I can type pretty darn fast on my keyboard! I think a lot of people are just used to using some other style of input on a phone and they don't realize it takes a little while to simply adapt to a new style. It has nothing to do with how easy it is to use the iPhone's keyboard. It is people being used to some other phone's keyboard or lack thereof.
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