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No Look Typing???

hiredgun said:
It would seem that most of us in this thread, swapped keys aside, lol, are decent typist on a physical keyboard. Since the keyboards are basically laid out the same way, there MUST be a way to set up on "home row" for the touch screens right?????
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well, maybe but... there's not enough room to accommodate the standard positioning of the fingers so for us old-farts, touch typing on a phone's probably going to be tough. I see some though who are just as fast with two thumbs on these phones. I guess it's what you're used to. I don't think I'll ever be as fast on a phone screen as I am on a fullsized keyboard. That's why I love the ability to text on my laptop.
 
Fleksy markets itself as "powered by patent pending technology that makes typing on any device fast, accurate and so easy you can type without even looking." I don't know if that statement is entirely correct, but it does have a very good corrective algorithm - and I love the swipe up/down gesture to cycle through word suggestions. The keyboard also includes a special hidden "invisible" mode where the keyboard is entirely transparent and it looks at the relative positions of your taps to determine what word you are inputting.

It is definitely worth trying out, even if only to see what it's all about.
 
Looks kinda nice but with Inkpad it wouldn't let me see the body of the text I was putting into the note if I rotated the display. I probably could fix that somehow but not sure if it's worth four bucks. I just need to practice being more careful with the keys.

I'll think about it though as it really did seem to have a good correction alg. I didn't play with the invisible mode but that sounds interesting as well.

The area for the "keys" is definitely larger and easier to hit though, I'll surely give you that!
 
codesplice said:
Fleksy markets itself as "powered by patent pending technology that makes typing on any device fast, accurate and so easy you can type without even looking." I don't know if that statement is entirely correct, but it does have a very good corrective algorithm - and I love the swipe up/down gesture to cycle through word suggestions. The keyboard also includes a special hidden "invisible" mode where the keyboard is entirely transparent and it looks at the relative positions of your taps to determine what word you are inputting.

It is definitely worth trying out, even if only to see what it's all about.
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Very interesting, with an "invisible" keyboard one would have NO choice but NOT to look!! Kind of like learning to swim by getting thrown into the water! Do you actually use it yourself?
 
hiredgun said:
Very interesting, with an "invisible" keyboard one would have NO choice but NOT to look!! Kind of like learning to swim by getting thrown into the water! Do you actually use it yourself?
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I use it from time to time, and have (in the past) used it for months at a stretch... I seem to keep coming back to the stock Google keyboard though. Tapping to type just feels so inefficient when I could be swiping instead.
 
Stuntman said:
I used to do no look typing. That was when I had a landscape slider keyboard on my phone. I would feel around to ensure my thumbs were at the right spot before pressing down on the key.

Phones now often do not have a physical keyboard. There is no tactile feedback and on top of that, once you touch the screen it will register a key press. I hope that someday someone will make a high end phone with a landscape slider keyboard. Right now, the only phones that have landscape slider keyboard are all pieces of crap.
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The Nokia N900 is not and never was "a piece of crap" apart from it's speed (which surely down to it's 2009 hardware) has still the best mobile Web browser I've ever used.

It would hold it's own today with any sub
 
Thanks codesplice but I just can't get used to not being able to see what I'm typing and there's no way around it that I can find. It happens when rotating the phone. When I do that Fleksys keys get nice and large but that's when you can't see what you're typing. I "hid" the spacebar and could then see one line but the delete, enter and alphanumeric toggle key are gone.

Looks like I'll just have to stay with the basic and type slower. Thanks anyhow.
 
hiredgun said:
I actually like Swiftkey too, and have it along with a ton more, lol. Care to share your settings seeing as you can no look type on it?
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I actually use Swype, although I like SwiftKey as well. I'd love to be able to no look Swype!
 
IOWA said:
I can no look type using swiftkey.
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I did use SwiftKey for a while. The auto correct was great, but I found I was making way too many keying errors. I just didn't like the layout. I'm using Kii now because its 13-key split layout in landscape is the one I like the most and am most comfortable typing with.

dynomot said:
The Nokia N900 is not and never was "a piece of crap" apart from it's speed (which surely down to it's 2009 hardware) has still the best mobile Web browser I've ever used.

It would hold it's own today with any sub
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They say there is more than one way to skin a cat, so after reading the last few comments I am just wondering if a keyboard with a GREAT predict function would act as an "equalizer?" If you could use the "suggestions" to compose the majority of your text you would be doing a lot less actual typing!! Anyone here who wants to RAVE about the prediction of their keyboard??
 
hiredgun said:
They say there is more than one way to skin a cat, so after reading the last few comments I am just wondering if a keyboard with a GREAT predict function would act as an "equalizer?" If you could use the "suggestions" to compose the majority of your text you would be doing a lot less actual typing!! Anyone here who wants to RAVE about the prediction of their keyboard??
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I think Swiftkey probably takes the cake when it comes to prediction.
 
codesplice said:
I think Swiftkey probably takes the cake when it comes to prediction.
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Thank you sir, I have made a note to put that one at the top of the list. And just getting back to the original theme, what do you all think, DOES looking at the keyboard slow one down or not?
 
hiredgun said:
They say there is more than one way to skin a cat, so after reading the last few comments I am just wondering if a keyboard with a GREAT predict function would act as an "equalizer?" If you could use the "suggestions" to compose the majority of your text you would be doing a lot less actual typing!! Anyone here who wants to RAVE about the prediction of their keyboard??
Click to expand...

Text prediction actually slows me down. I have to look at the predicted word and decide whether or not it is the word I want to use. If it isn't, then I just wasted time checking the predicted word. I feel that text prediction is more of a gimmick if used that way. Text prediction is good when used in conjunction with spell checking or auto-correct.

When I type, I want to just concentrate on typing the sentence that I am thinking of. Typing on a full-sized, physical keyboard allows me to just concentrate on what I want to type and not worry about whether or not the computer is able to properly predict what I want to type. There is a rhythm and train of thought that flows when without using any type of text prediction or even auto correct. That train of thought flows smoothly when I have to type the whole word. If I only type part of the word and rely on text prediction, it interrupts my typing. I can finish typing a word faster than stopping in the middle and checking whether or not the keyboard is able to correctly predict what I want to type.
 
All this talk of no look typing on this thread made me try it this week. I found I am able to reasonably no look type. By looking at the word that appears on the screen, I am able to easily spot errors and correct them or see the auto-correct prediction to see if I need to make a correction. I'm going to try it more and see how well I can type.
 
I agree with Stuntman that text prediction would slow me down on a fullsized keyboard. A lot of the time when I'm typing a note on my laptop I don't even look at the screen, let alone the keyboard. BUT, that's when I'm using all 10 fingers and have touch reference points. I doubt I'd ever get there on a phone.

I've been trying out a lot of keyboards and Swiftkey may win out but I wish I could resize it on the fly. For instance when I open the browser and go to google to enter search arguments, Swiftkey covers up the entry box. I think I can adjust to that though.

I think I also saw somewhere that they are coming out with emoticons instead of ASCII versions. Again, no biggie. I was surprised though that it wasn't in the trial version. (From the looks
of their doc. it's in beta now)

My wife asked me and I wasn't sure of the answer but I believe if you buy Swiftkey and then get a new phone, you can simply download it at no charge to your new phone, right? (nevermind - I found the answer to this on their doc. page - yes - it's a one time purchase based on google ID)
 
hiredgun said:
Thank you sir, I have made a note to put that one at the top of the list. And just getting back to the original theme, what do you all think, DOES looking at the keyboard slow one down or not?
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If by "looking" you mean having the keyboard in your centre of vision then i think yeah it does mate. Better if you can see it from the outskirts of your vision so that it goes into the subconcious parts of the brain that trigger automatic reflexes imo :beer:
I know when i type on my phone its an auto-pilot type thing because if someone talks to me i look back at the screen and ive typed what they said lol :banghead:
 
codesplice said:
I think Swiftkey probably takes the cake when it comes to prediction.
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I have to say that I have been using Swiftkey for a few hours on my phone and the prediction is nothing short of amazing with this keyboard! After typing on it for while in a six or seven word sentence I may actually only have to type myself one word and hit the predict on the rest! Now technically this doesn't make me a faster TYPIST, but I am definitely TYPING faster!!! I am not sure if that's cheating or not, lol, but I am certainly typing faster the more the keyboard learns how I talk!! I think we may have a winner here!!!:)
 
Yeah, it's going to take a bit of getting used to but I just bought the official version of Swiftkey. It'll be nice when they come out with true emoticons vs the ASCII ones that are there now. I don't see it mentioned on the forum but hopefully it won't be too long. I tend to use them as without voice inflection, messages can easily be misunderstood.
 
03bluecoupe said:
It'll be nice when they come out with true emoticons vs the ASCII ones that are there now. I don't see it mentioned on the forum but hopefully it won't be too long.
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That's really the only thing that keeps me from using it full time. Once they add those it'll be the perfect keyboard for me. Until then it's mostly the Google keyboard.
 
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