I guess one of the features of the iPhone that I was most apprehensive about was the virtual keyboard. I’ve used on screen keyboards on devices such as the HTC TYTN but honestly had a very poor experience with them. I heard that the iPhone was different. Months ago, I was in an Apple store playing around with the first iPhone and I must admit….I found it virtually impossible to type on. Never seemed to be able to hit the right area of the screen for the character I was looking for.
Shortly after picking up the iPhone 3g, I started typing on the virtual keyboard…..very slowly. Some of the tips help such as holding down the letter before releasing such that you can slide to the one you really want. Yeah right – that’s going to work for high speed typing after years of typing on physical keyboards where holding a key down is the last thing you want to do. It was about as far away from an enjoyable experience as I’ve had in some time. Sort of felt like holding a wire that was giving me a shock, wanting to pull my hand away but having to hold on anyway.
Then I remembered an article I read a few weeks ago about the iPhone’s auto correcting capabilities so I gave it a shot. Away I went just trying to get my finger on the on-screen key hoping I got the letter and ignoring any mistakes. Once again – very hard for me since I type 80+ words a minute and frequently correct as I go. But I tried anyway. Gotta say – Apple got it absolutely right on this. I won’t claim to be the fastest typist on that HTC TYTN with its slide out QWERTY keyboard but right now I’m easily typing faster on my iPhone than I ever had on the TYTN. In fact I wrote the entire first post on the iPhone using the fantastic WordPress app.
The other aspect of the virtual keyboard that I find elegant is that it appears whenever I need it. I used to do a lot of reading/browsing on the TYTN in portrait orientation. As soon as I hit somewhere I needed to enter data I needed to rotate the device (which, of course, doesn’t rotate the image on screen), slide out the keyboard (which finally rotates the screen….slowly) and hope that after I did this I did not accidentally tap the screen causing the field I was in to lose focus. On the iPhone, its simply there whenever I need it. My only gripe here is that it would be nice if more apps supported landscape orientation such that I could use the wider keyboard. Not a major problem though.
You’ve gotta know the shortcuts though or you’re not going anywhere. Some of my favorites.
- When typing an email address pressing the period to get the domain extensions (.com, .org, etc.)
- Double tapping the space bar to get a period and space. In fact, I do this sometimes when entering email addresses into non-email fields Seems easier to double tap space, delete the space and add the domain extension than trying to switch back and forth from the numbers screen.
All in all, I’ve gotta say that Apple did a great job on the virtual keyboard. I expect to use devices with them for many years to come.
-John
Tags: HTC TYTN, iPhone, Keyboard, virtual keyboard
