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No keyboard improvements for iOS 6?

S

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
1,046
329
The iPhone keyboard sucks big time in its current form. The auto correct is terrible. Moving the cursor around is a hit or miss. I can't believe Apple didn't announce any innovative new features for the iOS keyboard. Atleast a Swype like keyboard at the minimum? Hell even the Blackberry 10 touchscreen keyboard looks leap years ahead of the iPhone keyboard. I am disappointed to say the least.

Another good reason the next iPhone needed to be WIDER with more horizontal pixels, not just taller. Forget developers, Apple should have been thinking about making users happy first.
 
saintforlife said:
The iPhone keyboard sucks big time in its current form. The auto correct is terrible. Moving the cursor around is a hit or miss. I can't believe Apple didn't announce any innovative new features for the iOS keyboard. Atleast a Swype like keyboard at the minimum? Hell even the Blackberry 10 touchscreen keyboard looks leap years ahead of the iPhone keyboard. I am disappointed to say the least.

Another good reason the next iPhone needed to be WIDER with more horizontal pixels, not just taller. Forget developers, Apple should have been thinking about making users happy first.
Click to expand...

I do not miss much from my Android phones, but I still dream about Swype.
 
The keyboard is actually a little different going from iOS 5.1.1 to 6 b1. It looks the same, but it's behaving slightly different. I can't tell if this is intentional or not, but I've had to make slight adjustments to my typing on the screen keyboard. It just feels slightly off or different.

Like you said though, I think Apple is having trouble abandoning it's original and simple, single approach with either a change to the keyboard or a choice. This could result in lesser user satisfaction... Who knows, this is a beta and there may be additional announcements along with the next iPhone launch and ultimately the launch of iOS 6.
 
I agree the iPhone keyboard is terrible. My main issue isn’t even about hitting the wrong key, it’s when you hit a key, and nothing comes up. It’s like my fingers are faster than the iPhone can process them, which is unheard of. Or for some reason, you hit space and it does a return instead. Before plunging to the iPhone 4 years ago, I used to use mobiles with physical keys. Loved it. Which is why I was so apprehensive about getting the iPhone 3GS. But after playing around with friends' iPhones, I realized the keyboard was actually pretty good. The keyboard sold me on the 3GS. Not sure what they did, but prior to iOS 4, my 3GS under iOS 3.x.x was great when it came to the keyboard. I never had any issues. It was very responsive, and accurate. After iOS 4, that’s when I started noticing all the problems we currently see now. So definitely a programming issue.

My take, they should make something like what the Galaxy SII does, the finger sliding. Or incorporate a vibrate for each key pressed. At least that way you’ll know you actually touched the key and it reacted accordingly. Sure they have the tone sound, but I find it annoying to hear clicking sounds every time I type. But ultimately, just make it work better than it does. The main issue for me with the iPhone keyboard, is it's not very responsive and accurate as it used to be in iOS 3.x.x.

The iPhone does many big things great. But the little things that DO matter, have suddenly been over looked the last couple of years. It’s like they concentrate on more BLING, than substance.
 
gslrider said:
I agree the iPhone keyboard is terrible. My main issue isn’t even about hitting the wrong key, it’s when you hit a key, and nothing comes up. It’s like my fingers are faster than the iPhone can process them, which is unheard of.
Click to expand...

This happens to me too, 70% of the time if not more. It just seems like the phone can't keep up with my fingers, it gets especially laggy when composing a longer message.
 
It seems that older phones with newer OSes always seem to have KB troubles. My iPhone 4 is struggling a bit with the keyboard in the latest iOS 5.1.1... I'm excited about a new iPhone just to see my keyboard return to fully functional... Also, that I've had this phone now for over 2 years. It's so beat up...
 
I agree that something happened since iOS 4 that made the keyboard really painful to use. I always thought it was temporary and that Apple would issue a fix, but the keyboard still drops letters and lags behind in visuals and also the clicking sound.
 
Being a native German, I’m tired of the auto-correct replacing the female “the” (die) by the dative form of “you” (dir) all the time. Or, depending on its mood, the other way around. Thus, I agree, it definitely need tweaks. Plus, umlauts and ß are horrible to type.
 
oh no! You actually have to type out words. How lazy do you have to be to want "swype" crap?
 
mrsir2009 said:
I think the iOS keyboard is fine, with the exception of moving the cursor around - Two words: Incredibly tedious!
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++++1
Come on Apple, cursor keys. You know, like pc's had back in 1982? And every computer since then? How hard is that to understand that typing any length (including a short paragraph) sucks without them.
 
tmarks11 said:
++++1
Come on Apple, cursor keys. You know, like pc's had back in 1982? And every computer since then? How hard is that to understand that typing any length (including a short paragraph) sucks without them.
Click to expand...

Except for the original Macintosh it's interesting to note:

original-mac-keyboard.jpg


I guess Jobs was just always against arrow keys.
 
It's still by FAR the best keyboard available for any mobile platform. Every Android keyboard Google has released just continues to change slightly and is now almost fully morphed into an iOS clone. :apple:
 
APlotdevice said:
Except for the original Macintosh it's interesting to note:

Image

I guess Jobs was just always against arrow keys.
Click to expand...

Jobs didn't include arrow keys on the Macintosh because he wanted people to get used to having to use a mouse to interact with the computer. Look where that got us now, huh? :p

Futhark said:
Same for me. One feature I loved on my friends Galaxy S II was the kickback or vibrate feel as you typed.
Click to expand...

You can jailbreak and get HapticPro which turns on Haptic feedback.
 
Forget about the stupid Slide, how about SwiftKey? It's amazing keyboard that suggests you words based on the words you're typing at the moment. If I type Hi, it will suggest How as my next word, so I can type Hi, how are you in literally 4 clicks. It works amazingly well and it also learns and improves itself with the time.

In the second post there was a video about Octopus keyboard, which looks very good as well, but you have to jailbreak your iPhone in order to get it, and that's not the point. The point is that the iOS keyboard is very much behind Android, Blackberry (soon) and even Windows Phone... Apple has done very little changes since 2007 and the only way of getting something better is Jailbreak...
 
chrf097 said:
Jobs didn't include arrow keys on the Macintosh because he wanted people to get used to having to use a mouse to interact with the computer. Look where that got us now, huh? :p
Click to expand...

Well, as someone who started out on a Macintosh 512K, to this day I do almost exclusively use the mouse to move the insertion point and select text. Though performing either task with the touchscreen is just so much more cumbersome compared to either mouse or arrow keys.
 
dsa1971 said:
I guess I'm in he minority here. I've never had issues with the keyboard
Click to expand...

Me too, the people who aren't having problems probably won't mention it. I never got the autocorrect problems either. It gets almost everything I screw up right.
 
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