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A study reports that typing on the iPhone is twice as slow

Thursday, Aug. 16 2007 | Author: Griffith

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Chicago-based User Centric, has released the results of a study it made with 20 people. Half of those users had cellphones with QWERTY keyboards, while the other half had numeric keypads.

It took QWERTY users almost twice as long to create the same message on the iPhone as it did on their QWERTY phone. While there was improvement over time, the difference persisted even after using the iPhone for 30 minutes.

Although the study isn’t very big, in terms of the time spent on it, or the number of people who tried the device. I think that the test subjects should have had as much time with the iPhone as they did with any other device.

In my opinion, a better way to conduct the study would be to have the QWERTY cellphone owners testing a numeric and the iPhones inputs, and vice-versa for the keypad-cellphone owners.

Here are some of the other facts that User Centric determined from the study:

Most participants said their fingertips were too large for the iPhone touch keyboard.

Participants noticed there was no tactile feedback from the iPhone keypad.

Participants had 11 errors on the iPhone compared to three on their own phone.

Five out of 20 respondents wanted a stylus.

Long fingernails could be a problem.

Personally, I don’t find any of the results surprising, but it’s nice to see how big the gap is between the iPhone and it’s “competitors” in terms of writing speed. I expected to be a delay, but from the reports of some iPhone owners, that gap eventually became very small, or even non-existent after a few weeks.

I wonder if the next versions of the iPhone will feature some sort of tactile response, possibly like the response that the new RAZR 2’s external touchscreen gives.

Would you prefer to have such a response, or do you think it’s just a matter of getting used to the touchscreen?

[Via Between the Lines]

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7 Responses for "A study reports that typing on the iPhone is twice as slow"

Super Jamie

August 16th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
1

I think this is a flawed report.

You’d probably find the exact same results in users who were asked to change between mobile phone “number style” text entry, and BlackBerry QWERTY text entry, or vice versa. Until they got used to it, anyway. This is a fact of life at my workplace.

You’d probably even find a slight difficulty in users who are asked to text message with different brands of mobile phone, as the spacebar, punctuation and predictive text keys are slightly different between models (which is the reason I’ve always stuck with Nokia, I just can’t be bothered learning a new phone all over again).

Whilst I agree that the lack of tactile response in an iPhone is a disadvantage (seen Maddox’s iPhone rant? hahaha), it’s just one of the reasons I think the iPhone is an inferior product.

This study proves nothing more than humans are not instantly-adaptable robots, but are able to learn new communication skills, and re-train muscle memory over time. Thank you ZDNet for the news flash (that’s about their normal standard of article anyway).
Tobsterius

August 16th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
2

I’m not really a cell phone guy, so the freebies that the phone company throws at you are fine for me. I never used, owned or never had the need to own a smart phone/PDA like a Treo…

When I first played with an iPhone, I found typing pretty easy and after a few minutes, I was pretty fast at it. It’s interesting that I never had experience with a thumb board so I adapted pretty well to the virtual keys…

Now when I fool around with a Treo or a blackjack in a store, I actually find the thumboards very cumbersome. The keys are just too damn small. It’s like trying to use a calculator watch. At least to me.
hap

August 16th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
3

No tactile response has been a concern of mine about the iPhone but not nearly as much as the size of the keys. This study mainly confirms that it could be a problem. It’s nice to see something like this as opposed to some of the early, euphoric reports of the keyboard being just fine. However, it is a bit flawed. They probably should test people like me on both devices who’ve used neither type of keyboard with any regularity.
Saborlas

August 16th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
4

My main beef with the iPhone is that it costs as much as a PS3, yet does less. After that comes the tiny keys and easily-scratched touchscreen and lack of tactile feedback and the overly-light materials that will fall apart the moment you drop it and the complete lack of buyer’s remorse coming from people who spent $600 on a glorified cell phone/PDA combo that locks you into one of the lousier service providers out there.

Ah, venting feels GOOD.
Tobsterius

August 16th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
5

I dunno, PC World quite literally gouged the iPhone screen with keys in a series of stress tests, and the screen came out totally unmarred…

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,133636-pg,1/article.html

There’s a video too.
JC

August 17th, 2007 at 11:42 am
6

My god! you mean after up to half an hour on a brand new interface they couldn’t come close to something they’d been using for years?? This is HORRIBLE.
Information Salad #55: : ISPN Media

August 25th, 2007 at 9:25 am
7

[...] a learning curve when typing on the iPhone. Let’s see you learn anything in 30 [...]