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iPhone Keyboard: How long has it taken you to master?

G

G4R2

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 29, 2006
547
4
I'm fairly curious about this. How long, if at all, has it taken iPhone users to get accustomed to the keyboard, if at all? I'm coming from a Motorola Q and after two days at a rate comparable to that of the thumb pad.

Also, I'd like to know what tricks users have come across to make typing more accurate. One tip that was mentioned on Gizmodo (and elsewhere no doubt) suggests that a good way to increase accuracy is to slide your finger across the keypad until you reach the desired character before releasing. It works rather well and a video of this is posted here:

Gizmodo iPhone Typing Tip and Video
 
This is my first smart phone. I got it on launch day now I am totally proficient. I have been typing my arse off on that keypad. I dont have many troubles hitting the actual key I was intending. I wish every aspect of the phone had landscape mode though.

eta:watching that video, that guy is going wayyyyy too slow with that slide method.
 
Once i just typed and left the iphone to correct my mistake automatically it was about a day.

Edit: In the video, he says this is his 3rd time typing something on this.
 
This is my first phone with a keyboard, I had an old RAZR V3c.

But as the apple video shows, if you trust the phone you will typing faster than before.

write now I'm typing about 25-35 word per minute. This is only after a day of trying it out and playing with notes.
 
About 3 minutes or so, literally. The trust factor of the keyboard is a huge aspect of that and I was very open to trusting it right off the bat. In fact, I'm posting this on my iPhone right now and am actually touch typing, no joke.
 
I'm on day 3, and I'm getting much better at it. Typing with one finger was easy the first night. Two thumbs took me until today before I was comfortable returning emails as quickly as I was on my blackjack.

The tricks for me were (1) definitely trust the correction feature and use it to the fullest. It is that good. and (2) wait for the popup and confirm you have the right key before you release. As Gizmodo pointed out, you can even fix your own mistakes before you release the key by sliding left or right. If you do that for a half hour or so, it will initially slow you down, but you'll accelerate the learning process of where your thumbs need to be relative to the keys.

Then you can stop doing that, go back to your normal speed and you'll find you're making even fewer mistakes and the mistakes you have left are easily within the capability of the software to correct.

Now for things the keyboard can't correct, like passwords, I still tap, pause, confirm the key, and then release. Works perfectly.
 
auto-correction is awesome

i have had blackberry 8800 and pearl and i can definitely type a lot faster on the iphone than on the others. the autocorrection is unbelieveable (i mean, you don't even have to hit the right key and it still knows) - i think this is really what let's you fly through typing. really don't know what the fuss was about before - i guess walt mossberg is kind of an old man so i can see why he was getting frustrated the first few days...
 
Its extremely easy to master. Just go with the flow and you should be fine. It didn't take me more than a minute!

Cheers.
 
1 second.
Seriously - I started typing better than on my keyboard. Granted, I'm a lousy typist!
I probably typed every word incorrectly on the phone but it guessed what I wanted correctly and would accept the guess when I pressed the spacebar - which is automatic when starting a new word.
Like a reviewer sid - "trust". (I left the typo as an example of how truely horrible I type)
 
Shocked at how good I've become

When I first started typing when I got the iPhone I thought "oh god-this is going to be hard." After a day I just started 2-thumbing away and letting go, no matter how horrendously I mistyped. Amazingly it would auto-correct even the most mismatched typing I could muster. It really does just figure out if yo'ure off by a letter or two even when the whole word is off. Trust, trust, trust and you'll be flying. I am now two-thumbing pretty fast and loving it.
 
to tell you the truth, i took me about 30 minutes to master it. im typing faster than i was on my old phone. so the keyboard is easy, just got to get use to it
 
Has anyone had any serious problems getting accustomed to the keyboard?

It seems that some reviewers are really hung up on this one feature. I personally feel that the tradeoff between having a tactile keyboard and a larger screen is a good one, especially when it comes to a device that is more centered on multimedia rather than text messaging. I have always preferred larger, high res screens for my PDA's in the past and having a tactile keyboard has translated into faster or more accurate input. And in any case, it seems that the only users likely to be affected by the on screen keyboard aren't necessarily self proclaimed "power users" but rather those who have invested themselves in Blackberries or Windows Mobile devices.

Once again, it's a subjective impression, but it doesn't seem that learning the on screen keyboard has a steeper learning curve or is any less usable then a tactile keyboard.
 
To my surprise, it's not taken long at all. Got my phone Friday evening and here on Sunday afternoon my thumbs are flying. Like people have said, definitely trust the auto-correct. But one key seems to be that you only need to brush the "key" VERY lightly. It's very sensitive and so really fast. I'm pretty impressed with it, given all the naysayers prior to Friday.
 
I thought it would suck, but after using it for only 10 minutes I aced it. Coming from a blackberry, I immediately went to using two thumbs. The Auto-Correct is great, I started to just go as fast as I could and see how it worked, it worked retty damn well except for a word or two which it was way off.
 
It took me about 2 minutes.. Im 17 tho. But the key truly is to trust the keyboard. Just type, and type fast. Dont be afraid to make mistakes, you will be amazed at how smart the keyboard really is. It is by far the best keyboard that I have ever used on a phone, and i have used a lot, including the blackberry keyboards, which i see fit to put in second place. But the iphone keyboard is absolutely amazing, you must TRUST THE KEYBOARD.
 
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