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Thoughts on soft keyboards

lyons238 said:
you must not be such a good typer on a computer keyboard then, because anyone knows you can type a good amount faster on a computer keyboard.
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I'm not amazing, probably about 60 wpm unless I'm really booking it. I'd say that's average and I honestly believe I could beat it with the Eris.
 
zerocool79346 said:
I went from a RAZR straight to the Eris, and have had absolutely no problems adjusting. I can type just as fast if not faster with the Eris, in fact, I'm probably as good with the Eris as with a computer keyboard honestly.
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You must type slow on your computer lol...

And if you can beat 60wpm on the eris, well maybe you should call guiness.
 
Every phone I've ever owned has been a Treo or Centro so I'm in the same boat. I love the tiny portrait hardware keyboards since I've used them for eight years. I can type 50 wpm + without looking at the phone. I don't like the idea that when I get my Evo that even if I get used to it I'll have to look at the keyboard to type.

The interesting thing for me though is that I can't type at all on an iPhone..I literally can't get a single letter without going very, very slow. The only soft keyboard I can type on decently is the Instinct. Unlike the iPhone and HTC soft keyboards I've tried it will input the letter I touch..the other ones seem to pick up random letters surrounding the letter I actually touch.
 
IOWA said:
You must type slow on your computer lol...

And if you can beat 60wpm on the eris, well maybe you should call guiness.
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Haha I need to try one of those typing tests on it and find out. I could be totally wrong, but I feel no less fast on the Eris fingerpicking than on a computer keyboard using homerow.
 
I type 80 wpm on my PC and about 25 wpm on Swype while 20 wpm on the HTC IME (I think i was even slower than that on a hard QWERTY back when I had my Centro).

I am really really bad with one hand (unless its an alphanumeric keypad, I can go super fast on that).
 
It still blows my mind that people type on their phones with only one hand. I cannot do it, regardless of the type keyboard.
 
I have used the Treo and the LG Envy both with physical keyboards and I loved them. I have also used the iPhone and I now have the HTC Droid Eris, both have virtual keyboards. For me personally, the virtual keyboard SUCKS ! Perhaps because I started out using the physical keyboard, but I can NOT get used to it at all! It takes me like 2 minutes to reply to a text message or longer to send an email. The one on the Eris is even smaller than the one on the iPhone. I was looking for a physical keyboard that I could dock my Eris with but I do not see one on the market. I got the Eris for free from a friend but I am prob going to use my upgrade and get the Moto Droid which has the physical keyboard.


Crell said:
Greetings, 'droids.

I'm currently a Palm Treo user looking to migrate to Android this summer on T-Mobile. I'm still eying devices and haven't decided what to move to yet, but one of the big stumbling blocks for me is the keyboard, or rather the common lack thereof.

I really like the thumbboard on my Treo and have gotten quite good with it. However, no one is making vertical keyboards like that anymore aside from Palm (now HP, god knows what's going to happen there) and RIM (and I have no interest in a Blackberry at all). On the Android front, that leaves me with either a landscape keyboard, which I've not cared for in any of my brief experiences with other people's phones, or just the on-screen keyboard, which I've never liked the concept of on any platform and have hated the few times I've borrowed someone's iPhone.

Of course, that's mostly from limited experience with both, and I admittedly used to be a die-hard Palm Graffiti user (I was pretty darned fast with that, too) before moving to the keyboard on the Treo and getting good with that.

So any advice from others who have made a similar transition? Should I be holding out for a phone with a keyboard (a la Motorola Droid or the rumored Samsung Galaxy S Pro), or bite the bullet and go all the way to the "in vogue" softscreen keyboards? I hate not having tactile feedback, but to be fair most of the horizontal keyboards I've used have had crappy tactile feedback as well (no key travel, no border between keys, etc.).

Have other folks had an easy time adapting to on-screen? Or to horizontal buttons?

Is the on-screen keyboard less crappy on a larger screen? Should I therefore only be looking at 4" devices?

Are there alternate input methods (Swype, et al) that alleviate the problem of text input?

While I'd love to hold out for a device with both (on the grounds that its better to have a lame physical keyboard and lame on-screen keyboard than just a lame on-screen keyboard), those seem hard to come by, especially on T-Mobile for good ones. I also don't want to just wait forever, as my deadline is early August since in late August I'm going to Europe for 2 weeks for a tech conference and want to be fully Droidified by then. :-)

Any thoughts, experiences, recommendations?

(And before anyone asks why I don't just go with the Pre or Blackberry if they have the keyboards I like, I'm looking at the full platform and neither webOS nor Blackberry have the complete package to compete with Android.)
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I recently moved from a Treo 650 to an HTC Dream, with a hard horizontal keyboard. This kb is fairly decent for typing, with separate buttons having minimal travel, but a definite click. What I don't like about the phone is that I don't have an on-screen kb for quick "one-thumb" tasks, e.g. unlocking the SIM card, or replying "OK" to a text. This phone forces me to use two hands.
 
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