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Returned to iPhone, and the keyboard is still terrible in iOS 5

Coming from the Droid X to iPhone 4s, I have to admit that I really miss swype. I liked that I did not have to press "space" after every words. After getting used to the layout of the keyboard I found myself textingwithout even having to look at the screen. I also found it is faster to swype something like "what are you doing" rather than "what r u doing" because the keyboard recognizes what I wanted to say if I was kinda close to what I wanted it to do, as opposed to correctly hitting individual letters.
I told my friend who is more tech savvy than i am to try swype and he hated it so it's not perfect for everyone, but at least we had choices.
 
aztooh said:
One other thing that was mentioned that reallllly grinds my gears; when the suggested word pops up...I have NO CLUE how to select or cancel the correction. I'm either TERRIBLE at hitting the X or iOS just decides it's going to change the word regardless of what I want it to do.
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Same here, it's a gamble on whether the pop up correction stays or is 'X'd out. I never aim at the corner x, I usually tap toward the left of it on any portion. Sometimes it works and is cancelled but other times it goes with the pop up even though I've already tapped on it. Seems like a glitch, hard for me to say myself.
 
You know what's another thing I hate about the iOS keyboard? It doesn't revert back to the original word you put in when you don't want an auto correction.

For example on ics if I hit the backspace once it'll undo the auto correction and revert back to what I originally typed. Whereas on ios it doesn't do that. It's committed to the auto correction it chooses for you. You have to actually delete the whole word and try again and this time be sure you catch it with the "x" to do away with the autocorrect.

This happens all the time on this forum when I'm typing with my iPad. For example when I'm trying to say "iOS" it'll sometimes think I mean "its". If I'm typing fast and hit the space bar I'm committed to "its" and the only way to change it is to erase the word and try again. Lack of suggestion bar is really frustrating. But even more than that, if that happened on ics simply hitting backspace once would revert the word back to what I originally wrote. And not only will it revert back to what I originally wrote, I can also highlight it to bring up suggestions of other words the keyboard thinks I meant. All this just feels much more intuitive and just makes editing unwanted auto corrections so much easier.
 
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Swype is excellent for simple texting, extremely quick and easy when you get used to it. As someone said in the thread previously though, if you're typing something more complex, like a long email involving technical words and punctuation it can be pita. I'd like to have both Swype and the normal iOS keyboard, with an easy toggle to switch between the two.
 
Roessnakhan said:
The best keyboard (if you can really call it that) that I've tried is Swype, its one of the few things I miss from Android. The iPhone keyboard has gotten worse over time - though I don't know the reason - but autocorrect is horrible now. If I had to rank them it would be:

1) Android (Swype)
2) WP7
3) iOS
4) Stock Android Keyboard (last experience using the Droid X)
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I've never used Swype, but otherwise I couldn't agree more with this list. The stock Droid X keyboard sucked beyond belief, but whenever my girlfriend steals my WP7 phone she always tells me how much nicer the keyboard is than her iPhone's.

She's a nurse, and it tends to not know medial words, which is all well and good, but unlike my Windows phone, iOS will auto-correct correctly spelled words to the most random and unrelated stuff.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I've never used Swype, but otherwise I couldn't agree more with this list. The stock Droid X keyboard sucked beyond belief, but whenever my girlfriend steals my WP7 phone she always tells me how much nicer the keyboard is than her iPhone's.

She's a nurse, and it tends to not know medial words, which is all well and good, but unlike my Windows phone, iOS will auto-correct correctly spelled words to the most random and unrelated stuff.
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FYI: Stock Android keyboard isn't the keyboard on the Droid X. Whom you quoted may not know what stock Android keyboard means.
 
onthecouchagain said:
FYI: Stock Android keyboard isn't the keyboard on the Droid X. Whom you quoted may not know what stock Android keyboard means.
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In that case, I never used the stock Android keyboard either ;)

But I can say that the Droid X keyboard was the worst... until the - was it 3.0 update? made it unusable, and the official Verizon fix was to download a 3rd party keyboard.

I ended up hating Android just watching my girlfriend struggle with her Droid X.
 
onthecouchagain said:
You know what's another thing I hate about the iOS keyboard? It doesn't revert back to the original word you put in when you don't want an auto correction.

For example on ics if I hit the backspace once it'll undo the auto correction and revert back to what I originally typed. Whereas on ios it doesn't do that. It's committed to the auto correction it chooses for you. You have to actually delete the whole word and try again and this time be sure you catch it with the "x" to do away with the autocorrect.

This happens all the time on this forum when I'm typing with my iPad. For example when I'm trying to say "iOS" it'll sometimes think I mean "its". If I'm typing fast and hit the space bar I'm committed to "its" and the only way to change it is to erase the word and try again. Lack of suggestion bar is really frustrating. But even more than that, if that happened on ics simply hitting backspace once would revert the word back to what I originally wrote. And not only will it revert back to what I originally wrote, I can also highlight it to bring up suggestions of other words the keyboard thinks I meant. All this just feels much more intuitive and just makes editing unwanted auto corrections so much easier.
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Yeh I'm loving the ICS keyboard, bar none the best hands down. It really is "smart", it's predicative ability still blows me away. Used to use Swift and Swype over the stock GB keyboard, but didn't even install them now. Wish iOS keyboard was like this, I do like the .com button on iOS though. I think some advantage has to do with the slight width difference of this phone vs my iPhones as well, just makes typing so much faster and easier/efficient.

One thing I didn't like about Swype is it has to learn your use in terms of words etc, and I had one time where somehow it completely lost months of built up use and had to start from scratch.
 
A problem i have is the fact that the keyboard is on the touchscreen, the iPhone screen being insufficiently sized. Hence, each time the keyboard appears some 3/5ths of the screen is occupied by it. Obviously, no way to go around this.

I feel handicapped or at least having one finger cut off each hand when using on-screen touch keyboards on smartphones, regardless Android or iPhone. The iPad (and tablets in general) for instance are quite different, as you can even use the benefits of qwerty.

I hope in the future Siri would replace entirely having to input letters by touch-typing on the iPhone.
 
bloutrein said:
The iPad (and tablets in general) for instance are quite different, as you can even use the benefits of qwerty.

I hope in the future Siri would replace entirely having to input letters by touch-typing on the iPhone.
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I also find QWERTY on the iPad easier to use but when typing fast I find it often misses keys much like the keyboard on the iPhone. Can't say what the experience typing on an android tablet is like.

As for dictation you should give it a shot on your Android. It's actually amazingly accurate and reliable. Siri dictation on the iPad is unfortunately also unreliable especially when sentences get too long. On Android it types out what you dictate as you speak so it can handle long sentences. Whereas on the iPad it waits for you to finish talking (and requires you to tap the mic icon again) before it writes anything out. So when sentences get long it becomes inaccurate or just straight up misses entire words.

Hope iOS 6 brings better dictation to the iPad.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I've never used Swype, but otherwise I couldn't agree more with this list. The stock Droid X keyboard sucked beyond belief, but whenever my girlfriend steals my WP7 phone she always tells me how much nicer the keyboard is than her iPhone's.

She's a nurse, and it tends to not know medial words, which is all well and good, but unlike my Windows phone, iOS will auto-correct correctly spelled words to the most random and unrelated stuff.
Click to expand...

I must admit the WP7 keyboard certainly gives the iPhone keyboard a run for its money, it's EASILY the 2nd best keyboard out there.
 
onthecouchagain said:
You know what's another thing I hate about the iOS keyboard? It doesn't revert back to the original word you put in when you don't want an auto correction.

For example on ics if I hit the backspace once it'll undo the auto correction and revert back to what I originally typed. Whereas on ios it doesn't do that. It's committed to the auto correction it chooses for you. You have to actually delete the whole word and try again and this time be sure you catch it with the "x" to do away with the autocorrect.
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Didn't you read post #12?

AlphaVictor87 said:
Also if you type in something that is supposed to be slang or whatever and it auto corrects it, if you hit backspace to get the cursor to the end of the word it auto corrected, it actually will pop up with what you originally typed and you can easily change it from there.

Visual help!

Image
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i guess the next iPhone will just contain a physical keyboard somehow, i think they would attract a lot of extra customers with this.
 
onthecouchagain said:
I cannot stress how poor the iOS keyboard is on the iPhone. I recently switched back to 4S and there are many things about this phone I like, but typing remains a sore spot. It's almost a deal breaker.

It's not just that it misses keys (which it does constantly--now I know where all those funny iPhone typo/autocorrection websites come from), but just other little things, like how it doesn't recognize and separate words when a bottom-row letter is pressed instead of the spacebar ('likebthis' will become 'like this' with the ICS keyboard) or how if iPHone thinks you've made a typo, but you're actually typing either slang or something, on ICS you can hit backspace once and it'll "un-autocorrect" it back to what you originally wrote. With the iOS keyboard, it's hit or miss trying to tap that X button to cancel their autocorrection. These are just two examples. There are many other little things that ICS keyboard just does so much more intuitively, which the iOS keyboard does not.

The shortcuts help mitigate the problem, but it's a roundabout way. The keyboard should be able to keep up. I have to type so much slower in order to avoid typos. I don't know if it's the screen size or what (because I noticed iOS keyboard is infinitely better on the iPad in either keyboard-mode or split-key mode), but the keyboard desperately needs to be updated or revamped in iOS 6.

And I know I can't be the only one who's experiencing this. I say this because I think it speaks to a bigger issue, and that is, iPhone users tend to deny that the phone has any faults, and some will even go as far to claim it as perfect, or "it just works." I've said this before: anyone who has genuinely used both platforms (Android, and specifically ICS, and iOS. Sorry Windows) will admit they both have their share of problems. This is called intellectual honesty, and when people taut that something is perfect when it's not, it actually does disservice to the product. If no one ever admits this, there is no reason for Apple to make improvements. Maybe this is why the keyboard has barely been upgraded.

Anyway, thanks for listening, and if you experience the same thing, do chime up.
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I actually prefer the iphone keyboard to the android ones I've tried. Back when I switched to android for a little while (HTC Evo 3D) I could not stand the keyboard. I always ended up hitting the wrong keys and everything. To each his own though, good luck.
 
I've got to say that Google have improved on the stock keyboard on JellyBean (I didn't mind the ICS one anyway).

I've been using SwiftKey on my S3 to replace the Samsung one, but haven't bothered installing SwiftKey on my Galaxy Nexus.
 
The iOS keyboard is unmatched IMO. I had a Galaxy S3 for a few weeks and the tipping edge in me coming back to iPhone was the ease of use of the keyboard. Tried many on Android and couldn't get to grips with them. iOS one isn't perfect by any means, but it's the one I get on best with by far.
 
ElNino9 said:
The iOS keyboard is unmatched IMO. I had a Galaxy S3 for a few weeks and the tipping edge in me coming back to iPhone was the ease of use of the keyboard. Tried many on Android and couldn't get to grips with them. iOS one isn't perfect by any means, but it's the one I get on best with by far.
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I have not tried the S3 Keyboard, but I have tried the stock ICS keyboard, and it is leaps and bounds better than the iOS Keyboard. The iOS Keyboard was PERFECT around iOS 3, but iOS 4 made some changes that pissed you off, and iOS 5, totally tried to correct already correct words....for example, "Changing "So" to "do"..."

For some reason the OS X Auto correct is nowhere near as aggressive as iOS either, the OS X Auto correct is almost perfect actually, and should be the one iOS implements.

The easiest way for Apple to solve this, while still being able to keep the same keyboard is to have AutoCorrect look at the context of the sentence. For example, If I type in, "I love you dearest Cassie babe" (yeah I send this one all the time :D)....it shouldn't change to "I love you dearest Cassie gave"....
"So, do you want a pizza?" "do, do you want a pizza?"....I can go on and on about how the iOS keyboard SUCKS :D

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moorken said:
i guess the next iPhone will just contain a physical keyboard somehow, i think they would attract a lot of extra customers with this.
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Steve Jobs during the first iPhone keynote said the fixed in plastic keys is not what the iPhone is about. There are already plenty of keyboard cases out there for people who want a slide out keyboard on their iPhone. I would know, I own one (but never use it, it is cool sometimes when I know I leave my MacBook at home, to be able to use it to get some work done).
 
dontwalkhand said:
I have not tried the S3 Keyboard, but I have tried the stock ICS keyboard, and it is leaps and bounds better than the iOS Keyboard. The iOS Keyboard was PERFECT around iOS 3, but iOS 4 made some changes that pissed you off, and iOS 5, totally tried to correct already correct words....for example, "Changing "So" to "do"..."

For some reason the OS X Auto correct is nowhere near as aggressive as iOS either, the OS X Auto correct is almost perfect actually, and should be the one iOS implements.

The easiest way for Apple to solve this, while still being able to keep the same keyboard is to have AutoCorrect look at the context of the sentence. For example, If I type in, "I love you dearest Cassie babe" (yeah I send this one all the time :D)....it shouldn't change to "I love you dearest Cassie gave"....
"So, do you want a pizza?" "do, do you want a pizza?"....I can go on and on about how the iOS keyboard SUCKS :D
Click to expand...



This, so much. Everything here is true. +100, if I could.
 
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