Survey: Less than half of touchscreen users prefer touchscreen

It may not be easy for some to type on touchscreen, but that's why there is a landscape feature! Who wants a larger phone to escape the touchscreen.
Listen! Let these people know that I'm giving out lessons on typing on touch screens. Contact me at ridaz4christ333@aol.com and set up a lesson plan today

"given that smartphones relied on buttons almost exclusively before Apple's handheld came along"
That's not how I remember it. My iPhone was my 5th smartphone (1st was a P800 in 2003) and 4th with a touch screen. Smartphones are an evolution of the PDA which have been using touch interfaces since the days of the Newton.

I wish they had gone with a few extra buttons. It gets irritating when I have to reach towards two different places depending on if I want to change volume or change tracks. It was a while before I had even noticed there WAS a button on my headphones.

The overloading on the home button annoys me a lot. For example, I have double-tap set to the iPod app. Double-tapping has an annoying tendency to exit my current app to lauch iPod when I just wanted the popup iPod contols. Not to mention that any lag and I suddenly find my double-tap turning into an exit to the home screen and then Spotlight opening.

All this extra work on that button makes me concerned it's the first thing that will break on my iPhone...

I recently dropped ATT and now use a Blackberry Tour. After owning an iPhone, everything after pretty much sucks. Dimwits who believe a BB is better
deserve them. the keyboard is difficult to use and no better, and most of the time worse, than the virtual keyboard. The trackball is clumsy and old technology.

My fervent hope is iPhone on Verizon, because ATT is truly terrible.

Nothing in this article suggests anything. It was a survey done with a small demographic of users and we have no idea of what that demographic is. It could have been users over 35 who are becoming a bit more set in their ways.

It always makes me laugh when people base fact on statistical data especially when they have no clue of the parameters. Ask me the question (just a few others here have stated). I like my multi-touch screen technology. Preferably I like my iPhone and don't plan on switching to any other device anytime soon despite all of the other great technology out there. I like my iPhone and I am of the demographic who bought their first "smart phone" because of it (kinda like all the Blackberry users that won't switch).

Using spotlight you are 4 keys aways from your contact

1 - home button
2 - home button again (for spotlight)
3 - M letter to call your Mom contact and she should be there
4 - Click on your mom

i'm tending to think that Apple is probably going to go with a netbook with keyboard/touchscreen tablet combo. sometimes you just need buttons. i'd say touchscreen typing is the only thing that you could say isn't as good, although if done well is definitely passable. you could go either way on it and i wouldn't blame you. but once they get voice control and touch working together really well, i don't think buttons could ever match touchscreens for everything besides word processing.

Interesting, but it's only one survey. I have a hard time combining:

> Apple remains an anomaly -- both HTC and Apple have a higher amount of current customers planning to stick with their touchscreen interface

with

> I wouldn't be surprised at all to see future iterations of the iPhone include either a few more buttons, or, even better, a few more haptic interface technologies.

So, Apple will add buttons because more people like their touchscreen implementation?

Odd logic aside, it shows less of what people think of touchscreens in general and instead the importance of investing in design for a touchscreen interface, where conventions and patterns are still being worked out. Things that we take completely for granted on the desktop, like copy and paste, need to be rethought for a new class of input device that doubles as the output device. These aren't trivial problems, so it's understandable that the industry hasn't nailed it.

The emphasis and investment that Apple puts on design is clearly paying off for them, and even they clearly still have some distance to travel.

Not all touchscreens are created equal. I want to see a breakdown of disappointing devices, not touchscreens as a whole.

I hope in the end it breaks down to a large segment of smartphones featuring both a qwerty (or qwertz :P) and touchscreens, because that's what I prefer, and that's why I found the droid so interesting. I personally think I'd like a touchscreen for just dialing numbers and calling people, but when it comes to actually writing stuff, I'd always miss a qwerty.