Three years ago I wrote an article comparing text input speeds using various devices and form factors from the PDA and smartphone world. Here's the update, with some modern devices (including the iPhone 3G, HTC Touch Pro 2 and Nokia N97) included and tabled, plus a rogue's gallery showing Communicator keyboards through the ages. Am I obsessing too much? Is raw text input speed that important to you? Comments welcomed.
Read on in the full article.
Excellent article, as are most found on allaboutsymbian! Is there time for you to include the 'Omnia' i8910 HD (S60 3.x fifth edition) in your table? I still have my Psion 5MX 8mb (not 8gb like the i8910!) almost pristine, back in its box. Yes, I did a lot on that keyboard in its day... Cheers!
first comment? we'll see.
not sure I approve of 27-28 wpm translating from 200-150 words you could conveniently write per day. that feels wrong.
also, I remember you don't really like word correction algorithms but that iphone goes quite quick and completely depends on auto-correction. personally I can't stand the iphone for typing but my trusty E70 is great. on t9 I hate stumbling over complex words its not that slow for the odd text but very stumbly on unusual words auto-correction is like that too.
cheers,
dj
damn
@nisched: No, I LOVE the iPhone's auto-correction. What I don't like is 'prediction' software, where you have to keep looking up at the screen to see what word is being suggested and then decide whether to accept it and then have to do the appropriate actions to do so - it would have been quicker to just type it etc.
The iPhone does this properly. It spots what you MEANT to type and corrects it more or less silently. I can't see why Nokia doesn't do the same for input on its phones, it's really not that hard to do.
Hi Steve,
Doesn't the E75 more or less correct the spelling as you go? It seems similar to the iPhone when deciding what you meant. I do however, have to look at the screen from time to time to make sure it spelled what I wanted.
T9 may be a bit slower for new words but once you've entered the words you use the most day to day it can be very fast (for a keypad). I can type a quick message without looking at my phone till it's done and then I only look at it for a sec to check it's not predicted the wrong words
I've got a N95 8GB and just gone on a type test web site and got between 20 and 25wpm from a couple of tests. Don't know what's up with Steve's thumbs!
Hi Steve,
What about E71?
It must depend very much on what you get used to. I used PalmOS devices with Graffiti for the longest time and was proficient in the script - quick and comfortable to use.
My E71's keyboard is less comfortable to use by comparison and no quicker.
Both pale in comparison with a portable, foldable keyboard. Very few comfort issues whatsoever and easy to touch type on.
Just typed it and timed it on my Nokia N82 and completed it in 55, 35 words per minute? This puts it 4th on the list. . I can type faster using T9 than I can any other method I've tried, without looking to. I'm not even that quick. Many people I know can type much faster.
I for one do miss prediction with word suggestion on s60. Maybe it will not help much for T9 predictive input, but for multi-tap it would surely save a lot of button-presses.
And when you write in more than one language regularly like I do, T9 language switching makes it almost not worth using.
But even with T9 on, sometimes you are just sure the phone already knows what word you are typing, and it still lets you spell it out!
Besides, it's not in the way is it? You can just ignore it if you want. With auto-correction, even a very clever system will get it wrong sometimes. Very annoying.
I completely disagree with multi-tap being the slowest.
touch screen input requires you to wait for an incredibly long time (comparitively speaking) between presses as opposed to physical buttons, especially when typing the same letter twice. (I know u can use the arrow but that's hardly any quicker)
Also considering most people have been using T9 or multitap for the past 10 years, I very much doubt it's the worst of all; in fact it's probably one of the fastest.
Also, no E71 on the list? Tsk.
"Doesn't the E75 more or less correct the spelling as you go? It seems similar to the iPhone when deciding what you meant. I do however, have to look at the screen from time to time to make sure it spelled what I wanted."
Do you know, I'd forgotten about that. And presumably on the E71 and E63 and N97 as well. Partly because it doesn't work very well, of course. E.g. Mistype 'on' as 'om' and get 'omnipotence'. Yeeeeess..... that matches my keystrokes, I don't think.... Better than nothing in many cases but world away from the intelligence behind the iPhone's auto-corrective aids.
"Don't know what's up with Steve's thumbs!"
Well, admittedly I'm not the fastest texter in the world, but note that my test text included several things which trip up predictive text. Try my test test and time yourself, please!
"Just typed it and timed it on my Nokia N82 and completed it in 55, 35 words per minute"
You have my respect, sir!
I can assure you that I'm around 4 times faster with the QWERTY keyboard on my E90 than I am with the numeric keypad.
Perhaps the problem is I'm a 40 something man and not a 12 year old girl. This means I have big hands and spend my working day writing emails on a full sized keyboard, not texting celeb chat under my desk.
Steve,
I looked at an online typing test, and it mentioned that WPM is actually based not on real words, but on standardised word-units, each 5 keystrokes, spaces included.
That would make your text 35.4 WPM-units long (and it makes your typing speed look more impressive!). Or 34, if the quotation marks and the "and" were not part of your actual test, that is not entirely clear to me.
just tried it on T9 and my E70. I was a bit quicker than steve and quicker on the qwerty than T9 but not much. however, it felt much nicer and less manic on the qwerty maybe because of the extra space/buttons. very subjective though, qwerty familiarity is high with this one.
Steve, thanks for the auto-correct comment. also, like the idea of having the same on the N97/E75 although obviously it is no use if it doesn't work. more detail on this? sapporobaby sounded happy with it but your "omnipresent" put-down was worrying.
I preferred T9 to qwerty on the 5800. easier to hit the right key and I hated the portrait qwerty on the iphone. too small even with auto-correct. but then you can get used to almost anything if you try, I like my E70 but many hate it.
Two thumbing an touchscreened N800 tested slightly faster as a iPhone and some other mini-qwerty devices. A hardware keyboard mostly increases the screenspace for viewing and composition and allows you to focus more on composing instead of typing. Remember most people think and type at the same time. Can you do this with T9? This is why qwerty rocks vs touchscreen keyboards. Mini-qwerty also beats the crap out of T9 when doing mixed languages. It is simple as that.
have you tried it with a blackberry? im curious how that compares. personally i just got 45 seconds on my first try which makes it the fastest on the list but then the blackberry is my daily phone.
All attempts to become the world's fastest texter have to use the following two sentences: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human."
Competitors are not allowed to use spelling aids or a predictive text programme on their phone.
First try I did it in 65 seconds, so that's 29.5wpm.
Second try i did it in 60 seconds, so that's right on 32wpm.
Plus it's 2am here so my ability is hampered!
I'm thinking if I can get that fast with predictive text, I should easily be able to hit 45+wpm with a decent qwerty pad.
I have no idea as to what text you use or how fast you normally type, but at least I can type 38wpm on my Nokia 5800.
Ok I reread the article and tryed it againg. 30 wpm 😊 , but still 😊
N95 8gb is at the bottom? Learn T9, man! I can smoke ALL those numbers with a 9-key and I'm sure a lot of readers can too!
How do you measure the WPM? I tried Dynite's sentence and I had 44 seconds. And dit an awful lot of mistakes. Interestingly, before I cut my nails I was hovering around 50 seconds for the same text!
Is than even possible that i-phone is faster in writing messages than N97?! Is it a joke or what?! How can u be faster on a touchscreen than on a qwerty keybord?! Do u have pen-styled-fingers?! =D
"N95 8gb is at the bottom? Learn T9, man! I can smoke ALL those numbers with a 9-key and I'm sure a lot of readers can too!"
Did you look through the whole table? Ahem. The N95 8GB (representing numeric keypad phones) is in the table TWICE.
"Is than even possible that i-phone is faster in writing messages than N97?! Is it a joke or what?! How can u be faster on a touchscreen than on a qwerty keybord?!"
You try it. The iPhone's superb writing aids mean that you can tap away and get EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER WRONG IN A WORD - and it'll still guess the right word and insert it! I'm not being an iPhone fanboy here - just appreciating their software tech. Try it on an iPhone or iPod Touch, especially in landscape mode - you can get some VERY fast speeds up, only ruined a little by having to put in real names and punctuation etc.
slitchfield wrote:"N95 8gb is at the bottom? Learn T9, man! I can smoke ALL those numbers with a 9-key and I'm sure a lot of readers can too!"Did you look through the whole table? Ahem. The N95 8GB (representing numeric keypad phones) is in the table TWICE.
"Is than even possible that i-phone is faster in writing messages than N97?! Is it a joke or what?! How can u be faster on a touchscreen than on a qwerty keybord?!"
You try it. The iPhone's superb writing aids mean that you can tap away and get EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER WRONG IN A WORD - and it'll still guess the right word and insert it! I'm not being an iPhone fanboy here - just appreciating their software tech. Try it on an iPhone or iPod Touch, especially in landscape mode - you can get some VERY fast speeds up, only ruined a little by having to put in real names and punctuation etc.
I read through the whole thing. Even where the T9 entry is, it's still way too low. Let ME do the test. I'll let you know where T9 sits. 😎
Tnx for the proposal but no =D Actually I've got the 3rd phone of the list, Qtek9000, and I'm not going to change it before xmas with the King of my xmas gifts: Nokia 5730xpress music....love it!
I just typed out the test on the E75 in 50 seconds.
Also, I find it hard to believe that the N95 8GB made such low marks with T9 enabled. I can type extremely fast on the device and fail to see how it does so poorly in comparison to some of the other devices.
Again, everyone's perspective on text input speed will be subjective to the user. What may work for Steve may be different for others, and vice versa.
Good article!
Interesting article! It would be great if you could update it over time with data from more current phones, like the Nokia E71, E75, E55 (it would be great if you could get your hands on one of these, I'm curious about what speed can be achieved with a half-qwerty), Samsung i8910.