[geeks] Smart phone data usage

[Jonathan Groll]

On Thu, 7 Jul 2011 09:49:41 -0400, Eric Railine <erailine at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Andrew Jones <andrew at jones.ec> wrote:
> 
> > I was pretty skeptical of software keyboards until I staged a cheap
> > experiment.  When the iphone was new and weird, I persuaded a die-hard
> > BlackBerry traditionalist to engage in a typing contest with a brand new
> > iphone user.
> >
> > They both performed miserably, but equally miserably.  Their figures were
> > within 5% of one another.  Conclusion: phone-sized keyboards are all awful.
> >
> YMMV (and obviously does) but I have to disagree.  The fastest iPhone user
> I've met wasn't as fast typing (or as accurate) as I used to be on my BB
> and I wasn't remotely the fastest BB user.
> 
> Having said that, Swiftkey for Android is pretty damn good at predictive
> texting & just gets better as it learns from your usage, and does help
> mitigate the speed difference with a software keyboard.  (Swype just never
> worked as well as even the default keyboard for me.)

I'm actually surprised that this tech hasn't made it to the desktop
yet (as far as I know) where it will improve the WPM output of many
average typists (although I guess touchpads for the desktop are still
a rarity).

On my phone pre-Swype I'd always write the obligatory single paragraph
email reply, but now that I've gotten used to Swype my emails are
typically 3 or 4 paragraphs. Not full Desktop length, but then again I
am a far better touch typist.

It's a powerful concept being able to enter a word with a single
gesture, Palm had a version of this before, but did anyone else have
whole word recognition back then?

Cheers,
Jonathan
--
jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
has_one { :blog => "http://bloggroll.com" }
Sent from my computer device which runs on free software