Texting on the iPhone

[RossoA]

I can't wait to get my hands on my own personal iPhone, but due to the fact that I text a lot more than I call, what are people's typing speeds like?

Just thought I'd ask people who have had their iPhones for over 2 months and had a lot of practise!

 

[gceo]

My good friend is an avid txt'r on a BB, and also works at an at&t company store, so he's "in the biz". I challenged him to a typing test. (I've never owned a QWERTY phone before the iPhone) and after a long sentence (normal grammer, not txt grammer) it was a dead heat. He was pissed because I had less than 2 months on the iPhone, and he's been on a Blackberry for a long time. Needless to say, he was very impressed with the speed.

The learning curve is a little steep, but you'll get the hang of it.

2 things I noticed, and liked.

1) You have to trust the auto correct, and even if you make a mistake, just keep typing the word that you want, and the iPhone will get it about 95% of the time. Especially after it learns your style.

2) 'Tapping' is quicker than 'pressing'. In other words, if you are light on your fingers with tapping, it's physically quicker and easier than depressing a physical button. On the iPhone, you only have to make slight contact to get a response, vs. having to press a button all the way down. I know some people favor the tactile response of a button, but I prefer the speed and less physical requirement of a touch screen.

 

[Sobe]

basically you just type..you'll make some mistakes but before long it comes out pretty fast and correct.

 

[The General]

When I'm at work, I have my iPhone sitting flat on my desk face up, and I type with my two pointer fingers. I can get going really fast some times. Probably about 30wpm. Obviously I can type way faster on a real keyboard and real computer, but this is a phone.

 

[earnjam]

I'm consistently 35-45 words per minute.

Considering I've never had a qwerty keyboard on anything other than my computers, I think that's pretty solid.

A warning though, you cannot send a text message to multiple recipients. You would have to do them one at a time and retype it each time. That's a little tedious for someone who uses it, but I've never sent mass texts before, so it doesn't really bother me.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

I can do about 30-35 words per minute. The tip about trusting the auto-correct is dead on. However, I still wish there were a cancel button for existing threads, rather than just for new ones. Anyone know how to cancel a text so I can make a correction?

 

[lilnyc]

I have an OQO 2 and an iPhone. I prefer the iPhone's virtual keyboard. I think it's faster.

 

[strurtle]

My previous phone was a treo 650 and I was a pro at typing with it. However, after getting used to the iphone, typing on an iphone is easier than a hard button qwerty keyboard.

 

[aross99]

I haven't used a phone with a QWERTY keyboard, but I can tell you I can type way faster than the aaabbbccc txt entry on most phone. Seems even faster than T9 to me. I find that I can type much longer txt's than I would when I had to type on a regular cell phone...

Keep in mind too that you can't send or receive picture messages. You can use e-mail, but it's not exactly the same..

My biggest complaint about txt's is no repeating notification for missed txt's. If you don't hear the message come in, you have to keep on checking your phone for messages. My old phone had an option to make it beep when you missed a txt or a call...

 

[Canuck4]

Not all phones have that feature, glad it doesnt cause it gets annoying after a while IMO....

My biggest complaint about txt's is no repeating notification for missed txt's. If you don't hear the message come in, you have to keep on checking your phone for messages. My old phone had an option to make it beep when you missed a txt or a call...

 

[samiwas]

Not all phones have that feature, glad it doesnt cause it gets annoying after a while IMO....

Yeah, a friend of mine had his notification set to some hard core death metal song...and the repeating notification was nothing short of infuriating He'd leave his phone in his bag when he went off to do a job and I'd have to hunt that thing down and power it off.

The only thing more annoying than that are those freakin' nextel beeps from those guys who think everyone else around them wants to hear their conversation.

 

[Avatar74]

I find the keyboard pretty fast to use. I've never been as fast with a small fixed-button keyboard.

Am I faster with a full-size keyboard? Absolutely, but I'll point out even there I'm fastest with the Mac G4 laptop keyboard where the keys are flatter than a standard full size keyboard. Less distance to press and faster to move your fingers between the keys without hitting the adjacent keys.

Same idea on the totally flat virtual keyboard but one step better... the intuitiveness built into the typing recognition software makes it faster to type on than a fixed keyboard that has less intuitive word prediction, dynamic dictionary support OR slide-correction.... If you tap one physical key and then slide to another, you'll hit the keys along the way. Here if you tap the wrong key, slide over, and release on another key, it only registers the key you release from.

I would say my normal typing speed on a full size keyboard is over 90wpm... I will never be that fast on a smaller keyboard because I still continue to use both and get faster on both. But at my best I'm probably 40-50 words per minute on the iPhone virtual keyboard.

What is really weird is that I've gotten so used to the upright orientation of the keyboard, which is narrower than the landscape version, that I type faster in the upright mode and make more errors in landscape mode now. This is only because I spend more time in upright mode so I can see more of the screen above the keyboard.