Shocker: iPhone virtual keyboard not as good as real ones
Posted on Nov 13, 07 05:19 PM PDT
A usability consultancy firm called Centric Inc, has determined that the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is more error-prone than its physical counterparts. I have heard “it gets a lot better after a month” a hundred times from iPhone users, but the experiment seems to show that the number of errors while typing on the iPhone doesn’t really go down with experience.
“iPhone owners entered text as rapidly as QWERTY owners on their own phones. However, iPhone owners made significantly more texting errors on their own phone (5.6 errors/message) than both QWERTY owners (2.1 errors/message) and numeric phone owners (2.4 errors/message) on their own phones, p < .01. Interestingly, comparing texting performance between iPhone owners and novices (non-owners) on the iPhone found no significant difference in error rates. "While the iPhone's corrective text feature helps, this data suggests that iPhone users who have owned the device for a month still make about the same number of errors as the day they got it," (more details)
We said in Jan 07 that the keyboard would not perform all that well, but it’s not important enough to stall sales: many iPhone owners don’t type extensively or carry a blackberry in addition to their iPhone.
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Legacy Comments
By careybagsbon , 20/11/07 11:20 AM (CommentID #371163)
Greetings to all.
Prompt the best online shop on sale of Books.
By jay , 14/11/07 5:59 AM (CommentID #362012)
Had a Palm Treo and a SE 900 series smartphone... the iPhone keyboard beats both wit ease.
By pwb , 14/11/07 1:10 AM (CommentID #361762)
That the keyboard is virtual (thus improvable) and the screen much larger so overwhelmingly outweighs any increase in typing errors that the subject is barely worth wasting a brain cell on.
By Hubert , 13/11/07 9:07 PM (CommentID #361565)
Hi Redboy, congrats for your skills. You're doing a lot better than the average user, it looks like. :)
By redboy , 13/11/07 8:20 PM (CommentID #361502)
personally i think that this is a load of crap. i can CRUISE on the iphone keyboard and with the error correction fixing 90% of my mistakes all by itself i'd say i type a hell of a lot faster than i ever did on my treo
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