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Ask HN: Are you good smartphone typer?

6 points by tester756 ↗ HN
I do wonder whether I'm an imbecil or actually those non-physical keyboards are mehh.

I don't know, smartphones are trilion dollar industry for more than a decade, but I still can't stand typing on it - how is your experience?

Are smartphones with physical QWERTY keyboard better? or available at all?

15 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] thread
luuuzeta
I usually type with my right hand only so I skinny finger my way through words, hoping that autocorrect picks up what I am trying to write. If I use both hands, I have greater accuracy.
smt88
I loathe touchscreen typing and am terrible at it, even 15 years later. I got up to 60 words per minute on my BlackBerry Bold, and I'm ~30 wpm on my phone when you factor in the many mistakes I make along the way.

Touchscreen-everything is the worst legacy of Steve Jobs. It's annoying on phones and has probably killed quite a few people in cars.

izolate
You can't blame Steve Jobs for that. Perhaps you can blame the absence of Steve for the proliferation of capacitive touch screens where they are not suited. I believe Steve would've known better, at least in the automotive world.

More on-topic, I'm also terrible at typing on my phone. I find my self leaving messages unattended to until I can find a physical keyboard from which to reply from.

thesuperbigfrog
I had a Blackberry Curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Curve) back in the day and it was a pleasure to type on.

I am not sure if it is the size of my fingers or the lack of physical feedback, but I cannot type as quickly on smartphone screen keyboards as I could on the Blackberry physical keyboard.

There have been a few Android phones with physical keyboard released in the past few years, but most of them are running older versions of the Android OS and are not / were not supported for very long in terms of operating system updates:

https://www.androidauthority.com/keyboard-phones-845839/

If there was a well-known brand that would get several years of OS updates, I would buy it.

LinuxBender
I just bought my first smartphone motorola stylus and I find the on-screen keyboard to be too small for my fingers so I use the stylus to poke my way around. I am also not finding the assorted swipe shortcuts to be natural for me. I really wanted a CAT phone as they are rugged and no frills but they are vendor locked. I had to find something to replace my throw-away flip-phone as VRZN is shutting off its network. If I can find an unlocked CAT I will just root the Motorola, nuke the Google cruft and use it strictly as an MP3 player. The Fairphones also look nice and easy to fix but not sold in the US.

So no, I do not believe you are an imbecile. There are probably large screen keyboard apps but then giving a keyboard apps to interact with everything sounds like a sub-optimal route.

nehal3m
I have a Fairphone 4 and flashed /e/OS because I like a deGoogled phone that skews towards privacy. I'm hesitant to swap out the keyboard because it's a systemwide app that receives a whole bunch of personal data and even passwords.

It sucks. I loved the iOS swipe keyboard and after tweaking the dictionary a little I could get up to 60-70wpm. This one I can't get past 30. I'd love a handheld keyboard accessory, something to snap onto your phone landscape-wise.

But then again it keeps me from wasting a bunch of time on my phone and for longer chat conversations I'll just hop on my laptop anyway.

giantg2
I'm terrible on a touch screen. Just look at my comment history.
suprjami
GBoard swipe makes my wpm very fast most of the time
noman-land
Is there any FLOSS keyboard that does swipe typing? It's the only thing I miss after moving to GrapheneOS.
suprjami
Apparently Floris and AnySoft: https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/qrjsr5/foss_keyb...

I also thought the AOSP keyboard did swipe, but it's been a long time since I tried it.

boring_twenties
I am using the AOSP keyboard and it does support swipe, but I'm not sure it's any better than just typing the old way. It constantly picks obscure words I've never seen in my life instead of the obvious one that everyone uses every day.
Mezzie
I'm a good phone typist, but I have very, very small hands. (I also prefer 60% or 40% keyboards for the same reason.)
gt565k
Just use voice to text / siri when possible. It’s a blessing when driving being able to dictate to the digital assistant and send texts or type up emails with your voice. Most underutilized feature of siri and Google assistant. If you have to be quiet, autocorrect seems to work quite well for me when typing. I literally get 40% of the keystrokes wrong and it works fairly well.
lproven
I hate it, but at the same time, I regularly get told I'm really fast and asked how I do it.

The answer to that is Swype. I bought it about 12Y ago and that paid copy still works on Android 10.

I tried to explain why it's the best here: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/swype_come_back/

I am a big guy: 6'2" (1.88m) and I can hold 5 pint (half litre) straight glasses of beer without the glasses touching. I can hit keys 11 white notes apart on a piano with 1 hand.

Most smartphones and almost all iPhones until the 6+ were too small to be usable for me. A 6.5" phablet is a one-hand phone for me.

Hardware keyboards... I had a Blackberry Passport for a year. Lovely OS, if a bit unfinished. (E.g. sometimes it got hot in my pocket and I had to go hunt unterminated background apps and kill them.) The only Blackberry with a keyboard large enough to be usable. It was much slower than Swype, but much more accurate, so overall less frustrating because I spent less time on corrections.

The only good mobile keyboard ever made was Psion's in the 5 and 5MX. Planet Computers licenced this for the Gemini, Cosmo and Astro. I have a Gemini; it's a wonderful mobile writing tool.

No American device ever even came close to the Psion keyboard. I've tried 'em all -- this is my living -- and they're all toys. Sadly most Americans never saw or tried a Psion.

But it's too big for a modern phone, sadly.