Question on Mobile Phones:

Is a capacitive touchscreen keyboard in landscape mode (like on the HTC Hero) good enough to replace heavy usage on a hardware keyboard?

Submitted by Reader

Answer:

I don't believe that's a yes or no question as everyone's experience with onscreen and physical keyboards varies. My take is having a good predictive text system and built-in dictionary are important on touchscreen devices that use an onscreen QWERTY keyboard. Unless you have a habit of typing your messages in standard English, you'll find that adding non-conventional words such as colloquial terms becoming a continual process.

The good thing is, it gets easier as you go along as the dictionary will gradually "learn" the less common words. The downside is, you'll have to keep your eyes on the screen while you type, unlike physical keyboards where you can feel (and memorize) the positions of the keys. So it is possible to type blind.

A landscape keyboard has its pros and cons. This usually gives you larger onscreen buttons, but your thumbs travel longer distance due to the expanded width. Like I said, your question cannot be answered with a yes or no, but it is possible to live with onscreen keyboards.

Codet

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Codet says...
Thanks for the quick and detailed reply!

Sep 21, 2009 16:58

kais3rs0ze

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kais3rs0ze says...
I reckon capacative is a big improvement for touchscreen experience but there is no doubt, a larger screen size is necessary for true finger touch (as opposed to using a stylus) and typing in lansdacape mode will help.
Damian Koh makes a good point as well: you need predictive text which learns or even better extracts language automatically to augment your Personal Dictionary....so your Personal dictionary which drives your predictive text makes the prediction highly relevant and accurate. My blog has an article on some new software called Adaptxt which does just that and I rekcon this is the future of predictive text software. See predictivetext.blogspot.com...
Adaptxt learns from inbox messages and your writing style to finely tune predictions.

Sep 21, 2009 18:13

tanalvin

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tanalvin says...
The key defining factor between onscreen keyboard vs a hardware keyboard is tactile feedback, muscle memory in the fingers, and overall speed of input. Onscreen keyboards don't have physical markers to define the keys and so make touchtyping quite impossible. Haptics can help some what but depends very much on how well it is designed and implemented. Predictive text is a moot point as it applies to both onscreen and hardware keyboards and its main aim is to reduce the number key presses to get to a word or phrase, and works for both types of keyboards. As a touchtypist, there is nothing to beat feeling the keys, finding the home keys and typing at speed without looking at the keyboard, which can be difficult to achieve with onscreen ones.

Sep 25, 2009 09:50