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Cellphones Technology

Typing Speeds On Mobiles Rival Keyboard Users, Says Report (theguardian.com) 145

People can now type nearly as fast on a screen as they can on a keyboard. "Researchers made the discovery during a study of typing skills in which more than 37,000 volunteers from 160 countries took a speed and accuracy test on their mobile phones," reports The Guardian. From the report: People who tapped out messages with a single finger managed on average only 29 words per minute (wpm), but those who mastered the two-thumb technique hit a blistering 38wpm, only 25% slower than an average typer on a full-sized Qwerty keyboard. One volunteer thumbed out sentences on their mobile phone at a blur-inducing 85wpm, far exceeding the 52wpm that people typically reach on a standard keyboard. While the study involved participants from around the world, the majority were women in their 20s and about half were Americans. People who could remember when mobile phones were only good for phone calls were considerably slower than younger users, the study suggested. Teenagers tapped out sentences at an average of about 40wpm, while those in their 40s and 50s managed only 29wpm and 26wpm.
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Typing Speeds On Mobiles Rival Keyboard Users, Says Report

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  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @09:35PM (#59268294)

    We complain about predictive text on phones and devices, but it works. It suggests the right word from the first few characters enough of the time that you look like a speed typer.

    • works 25% or less the time for me, what an annoyance. Also those stupid kid's emojis and photos that can pop up if texting from bouncing train, really got to take time to find a good plain dumb keyboard...

      • Do we REALLY need to wind up with hands so gnarled that we can snap our own wrists by flexing our thumbs?

        • Are normal QWERTY keyboards any better?
          Even Pen and Paper puts a lot of odd stress on our hands.

          It seems like millions of years of evolution, curved fingers that move in curves, designed for grasping, hasn't brought us well suited for working on flat surfaces. Desks, Keyboards, Glass touchscreens...

          Our esthetics, and precise manufacturing ability makes flat surfaces to be much easier to make, and seem visually clean. While we are designed to pick up rocks and sticks, and interact in a world of spheres and

          • All of this is neither here nor there. Smacking out text in a mobile device falls a bit short of getting things done. I can bang it out quick enough and type a bit faster on my keyboard where I get real shit done. These mobile Mavis Beacons can barely type 5wpm on a real keyboard.
          • I work all day long on a nice ergo-shaped qwerty keyboard, I have no joint pains after almost four decades of doing so.

            Your assertion of "not proficient" is nonsense, people can't work a smartphone keyboard as fast as I can type. Not by half.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      We complain about predictive text on phones and devices, but it works. It suggests the right word from the first few characters enough of the time that you look like a speed typer.

      On the contrary, from the article:

      The scientists found that autocorrect improved typing speeds by nearly 9wpm, but word prediction slowed people by 2wpm, distracting them and making them choose suggested words.

      • I wonder how autocorrect degrades as the subject matter becomes more technical, or at least less pop culture oriented. It was always fine for my every day conversations with family, but fell apart wildly for work messages, which is the majority of my texting.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Mate, it's called proof reading. What you do is ignore what you have written and just keep typing, you are going to have to proof read it anyhow, check context, improve readability and of course check the spell checking complaints, ignore sum for fun and correct the others.

          Typing speed is tied to one thing, keeping everything in the same place, being able to align your action within the space and being able to type without looking at the keyboard, or at the very least just keeping the whole keyboard accura

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

            Alphabetic won't be any better than QWERTY.
            Alphabetic is only good for hunt-and-peck typists with no keyboard experience.
            What you'd need is a key ordering that makes the most often used letter most easily accessible.
            I think that was the entire point of the DVORAK layout.
            In the time of on-screen keyboards, you'll probably want a layout that minimizes thumbs crossing/touching while typing.
            Which was not the point of any of the current standard layouts that I'm aware of.
            Though I think familiarity will outweigh

            • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

              by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @06:33AM (#59269124)
              Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @07:43AM (#59269258)

              Years ago (fuck almost decades ago) when I had a Windows Mobile PDA, I looked into several alternative keyboard layouts, optimized for stylus input. There were a bunch of them, even then, but one I remembered, was the Metropolis keyboard, named after the Monte Carlo method that was used for the optimization.

              I'd assume it would still work for hunt-and-pecking with a finger, and a similar design could be made for two-thumbs typing by splitting it. Of course there might be other layouts available nowadays, I haven't looked into it much beyond like Swype because even though i can get some decent speed on the phone, I hate the experience and usually leave all larger typing for when I have a proper keyboard.

              https://www.semanticscholar.or... [semanticscholar.org]

              PDF: https://www.keyboard-design.co... [keyboard-design.com]

          • Mate, it's called proof reading. What you do is ignore what you have written and just keep typing, you are going to have to proof read it anyhow, check context, improve readability ....

            So how does it help when the auto-predict/correct creates more mistakes than it "corrects? Yes, it spells correctly but inserts completely the wrong words. That is how it works with me. YMMV

        • I wonder how autocorrect degrades as the subject matter becomes more technical, or at least less pop culture oriented.

          It fails with pr0n words too. Try SSBBW.

          • For me, it suggests them when I didn't even mean them.

            When I sent my friend a text that he needs to solder a diode into a circuit to allow reverse current, my phone suggested "cowgirl" once I had typed "reverse c".
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That matches my experience. Even on desktop (remember when LibreOffice introduced prediction?) I find having to multitask - think about what I want to say and check the suggestions - slows me down overall.

        On mobile it depends on the suggestions. Gmail is sometimes helpful because it suggests whole sentences.

        I remember seeing people using it in Japan 20 years ago, but their mobile keyboards are a lot more awkward and even with a full size physical desktop keyboard you have to use prediction to type Japanese.

    • It only works well, if your dictionary is as limited as its.

      I was born in a tiny country where everybody can speak at least three languages, and intermixing four is not uncommon.

      Also, I like to write words "wrong" or make up words to give more nuance and expressivity to what I write/say.

      Even ignoring that my main language doesn't even havr fixed writing rules, and speaking for writing in one or one and a half languages "big" languages, autocorrect and predictive text are completely useless to me.

      It was such

      • ... obviously, a post about my language writing proficiency HAD to include some grave typos!
        Fuck you, Murphy's laws! ;)

      • It only works well, if your dictionary is as limited as its.

        I was born in a tiny country where everybody can speak at least three languages, and intermixing four is not uncommon.

        Also, I like to write words "wrong" or make up words to give more nuance and expressivity to what I write/say.

        Even ignoring that my main language doesn't even havr fixed writing rules, and speaking for writing in one or one and a half languages "big" languages, autocorrect and predictive text are completely useless to me.

        It was such a hassle, that having it enabled, had me correct autocorrect more often, than if I had done it myself.

        Fuck that insanity! Real keyboard or go sit on a pile of camel fleas!

        Well, to be fair, your needs are probably rather atypical, on the world scale.

        Polyglot or not, most people probably write in one language at a time on mobile.

    • I suppose for English it's pretty good, but noticed that for some other languages it's more miss than hit. Surprisingly I had very good experience about 7-8 years ago and used predictive text quite often, including swipe keyboards.Quality from my point of usage went down significantly, currently I do not use it at all.

    • We complain about predictive text on phones and devices, but it works. It suggests the right word from the first few characters enough of the time that you look like a speed typer.

      Interestingly the other day I noticed the privacy implications of this. When typing in my address I started with "Tat" and predictive text helpfully offered my full street name and house number for entering into a general text field.

    • No it doesn't work. It "predicts" incorrect things, so I basically ignore the feature. And the "autocorrect" frequently screws things up that I need to go back and fix if I want the recipient to have some idea what I am talking about.

      Maybe you can get 38wpm if I want to send a bunch of indecipherable gibberish.

  • what bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @09:39PM (#59268308)

    even if I did 30-something words a minute on a stupid smartphone's ass "keyboard" that's less than half my typing speed.

    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      I get 80 wpm in English and 90 wpm in German.
      But I do consider myself an to be experienced at using a keyboard, so I'm not surprised to be above the average. But still, the article claims that those "who mastered" phone typing reach only 38 wpm.
      If that's what one can hope to achieve on a phone, since that one 85 wpm typer must be truly exceptional, I'll stick to a regular keyboard. The the tactile feedback of mechanical keys also makes typing feel a lot better.
      • I get 80 wpm in English and 90 wpm in German.

        How is that possible, given that German words are five times as long as English ones? And those are the short German words.

        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          There are plenty of short words in German and they mostly use those in such tests [10fastfingers.com].
          I use a keyboard with a German layout (QWERTZ), which means that hitting the y, which is pretty common in English, with my pinky is not that comfortable.
          And while German might not even be not my original language I've been speaking, reading, and writing it for about 30 years.
  • Kids these days (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ryzilynt ( 3492885 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @09:45PM (#59268322)

    My son can look at me while having a conversation and bang out a half screen text message!

    He doesn't have to look! And it's (for the most part) correct.

    I was like WTF are you doing? As a test I had him send messages to me , while looking me in the eye.

    My skills are lacking.

    • by gosand ( 234100 )

      My son can look at me while having a conversation and bang out a half screen text message!

      He doesn't have to look! And it's (for the most part) correct.

      I was like WTF are you doing? As a test I had him send messages to me , while looking me in the eye.

      My skills are lacking.

      I am curious - was it complete words, or was it in "text speak" with tons of acronyms and shorthand? Not that those aren't valid as forms of communication, I've accepted that they are. But I generally don't use them ever, aside from the occasional OMG or LOL.

      I am terrible on my phone, mainly because I am constantly hitting the character next to the one I intend. I think it's a combination of tiny characters / no outline on them (gboard) / no tactile feeback (haptic isn't the same) / I am old. But then

  • Pathetic. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @09:46PM (#59268324)
    These numbers are pathetic, when I took typing in high school, about a million years ago, I got to over 80WPM on a manual typewriter. I expect at that time I could have easily broken 100WPM on a computer.
    No where near that good anymore, but I am still faster than most people I see at work.
    • And now I'm picturing someone typing on a 1960s-era telephone keypad, augmented with predictive spelling to choose the right letter of the 3 letters on each key (or 4 on the 7 and 9 keys).

      Of course we had that, in early cell phones--I had a flip phone with that. It was awful. Or else I was.

    • yeah 50 WPM is probably average for those not taught to type. I do between 60-80 and I am not considered fast, no lessons but I use a computer all day every day for the last 30 years. My mother even now is over 100WPM, but she was a typist back in her day.
      • Google tells me the average is closer to 39 wpm and 60-80 wpm constitutes a professional typist. According to that test, I'm currently typing 52 wpm but I have an extremely low error rate of only .34%. Unfortunately, I also have very poor proofreading skills so every error gets through. :(
    • by Rozzin ( 9910 )

      People who tapped out messages with a single finger managed on average only 29 words per minute (wpm), but those who mastered the two-thumb technique hit a blistering 38wpm, only 25% slower than an average typer on a full-sized Qwerty keyboard. One volunteer thumbed out sentences on their mobile phone at a blur-inducing 85wpm, far exceeding the 52wpm that people typically reach on a standard keyboard.

      These numbers are pathetic, when I took typing in high school, about a million years ago, I got to over 80WP

      • by Rozzin ( 9910 )

        typing with 1 or two fingers just felt excruciatingly slow and ineffective, and it was so obvious-seeming that if I could just figure out how to use all of the fingers roughly in parallel (and get over having to look at the keyboard and think about where the keys I wanted even were) then I could express myself a lot more quickly. Under better conditions I've been able to manage 120 WPM or more; 80-100 is probably more typical.

        ... and when I finally managed to get the "all the fingers, roughly all at the sa

      • might it actually be because it's not slowing them down because they actually read/perceive and think even more slowly?

        I used to talk far faster than I could think. It got me in a lot of trouble.

      • I know, right? Waaaay back in the day, i was on a project with a Phd in physics. Great guy, smart guy, designed good code, was an absolute drag down on the team. Why? This was the olden days and we only had three terminals with five programmers.

        Why a drag down? My friend used what he himself described as The Biblical Method - Seek and Ye Shall Find. The pointer finger on both hands and *literally* searching for the letter each and every time. Rule became, if anyone else needed a terminal, he need
    • I remember several of us in Pascal class in '86 bouncing off the keyboard buffer, BEEP BEEP BEEP... 40 WPM, with predictive test, bleh.
    • Ditto, and we had one guy in class who clocked in at over 140WPM on a manual typewriter.
    • These numbers are pathetic, when I took typing in high school, about a million years ago, I got to over 80WPM on a manual typewriter. I expect at that time I could have easily broken 100WPM on a computer.

      I doubt you would be faster on a computer back in the day. My Mom was a secretary and claimed she was >90 WPM. She used to finish typing a document and have to wait for the computer to catch up on 486 machines. I'm one of the faster people in my office, and I just clocked myself at 51 WPM. Pathetic...

    • by skids ( 119237 )

      I wonder if the control group was using chiclet keyboards...

  • Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zaraday ( 6285110 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @09:55PM (#59268334)
    I'm completely shocked that the *fastest* blur-inducing speed that one participant could tap on a screen is faster than the *average* speed on a keyboard. Shocked! Good thing they didn't list the fastest speed anyone in their study could type on a keyboard. I'll bet it was a MIND-BLISTERING TRIPLE DIGIT WPM!
  • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @10:02PM (#59268342) Homepage
    My take away: 'Master' tappers are still 25 percent slower than the 'average' typist. So is this with auto-completed tapping?
    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      My take away: 'Master' tappers are still 25 percent slower than the 'average' typist.

      You're calling them "master" tappers because they use two thumbs. I wouldn't call them that. Pretty much every single person under 25 uses two thumbs.

      Teenager on mobile phone: 40wpm average
      Computer typist: 40wpm average - https://www.ratatype.com/learn... [ratatype.com]

      My takeaway is that a generation of people now type as fast on mobile as they do on the computer. (not me... anything longer than 10 words and I'll use my laptop to write it).

      So is this with auto-completed tapping?

      No. The article says: "The scientists found that autocorrect improved typing speed

      • Can anyone give me numbers on overall wpm as it pertains to profit yield?

        Are we typing out such large volume that it necessitates round the clock speed typing?

        (We are not talking about telegraph operators, or novel writers, (reporters , politicians, clergy, etc))

        Whom among us today, walking around, just speed type shit out all day long? /poll

        • Whom among us today, walking around, just speed type shit out all day long? /poll

          I think it is pretty much a job that no longer exists. Back in the day, every large corporate office had typing pools, rooms jam-packed with ladies that did nothing but transcribe.

          The only modern equivalent to that I can think of is a court reporter. They generally use a stenograph but the end result is the same. Truthfully, they could easily be replaced with voice-to-text technology.

          • Truthfully, they could easily be replaced with voice-to-text technology.

            Only if you develop one that is law specific.

        • by Wulf2k ( 4703573 )

          It's not about doing it for 8 hours a day, it's about being able to get your thoughts out at roughly the speed they occur.

          If you're programming something, or writing a story, or a memo, or an argument, being able to output from your brain to the screen without having to stop that flow at its source is a huge advantage.

          I....s.... a..... h.....u.....g.....e......a....d.....

          What was I saying again?

          I dunno, I'll circle back to it.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      My takeaway is that if they can type only 25% slower than average typists with a full keyboard, there is no excuse for txt-speak. No more "ur" in place of "you are" and other shortcuts, because it doesn't save much time anymore.

      So good riddance to poor language skills brought on because we couldn't type at a reasonable speed.

  • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @10:18PM (#59268384)

    Take away the predictive typing helpers, something most desktop/laptop users don't have, and you'll see the real speed of typing on a smartphone.

    Otherwise, it's as stupid a metric as saying "I can type 10 million words in under a second" because I can open a huge text file by double-clicking its icon.

    • Take away the predictive typing helpers, something most desktop/laptop users don't have, and you'll see the real speed of typing on a smartphone.

      Which raises the question: why hasn't predictive text made more inroads on the desktop?

      • Because I can type out the word faster than I can recognize and OK that the 'prediction' is correct.
      • by Wulf2k ( 4703573 )

        Because if you have time to look up suggested words in the middle of typing a word, you're typing too slow.

        Error highlighting and suggested corrections are what make the most sense at keyboard typing speeds.

    • Take away the predictive typing helpers, something most desktop/laptop users don't have, and you'll see the real speed of typing on a smartphone.

      The numbers in the summary are without predictive text. The article says that using predictive text slowed people down by an average 2 wpm.

  • I got 86wpm and a 0.56% error rate using my laptop keyboard. The big thing for me is that it was all single sentences. I am certain that the results would be rather different if long form text entry were a part of the test. Yes, it's possible to type pretty quickly - especially with autocorrect - but using only two fingers gets tiring after a while; I'm sure that if a 1,500 word test were given, the dropoff for text entry on a desktop keyboard would not be nearly as pronounced as the entry on a phone.

    While it's certainly possible that kids growing up today are having their hand muscles develop differently than those of us who grew up with full computer keyboards (and still differently than those who used manual typewriters, and still different than those who lived before keyboards were a thing), it's far from a given that touch screen data entry is truly superior. The difference is even more pronounced when having to type more than simply English words; CLI commands that can't be autocorrected or passwords with symbols and case changes are going to take far more time to type on a virtual keyboard. ...still, it was nice to know how fast I can type.

    • I wish I could compose a professional email or write code at 86wpm. Really it's a useless metric unless you are a secretary.
      • by Wulf2k ( 4703573 )

        When your brain finalizes that line of code that it wants to get out, does it have to wait 2 seconds or 10 seconds before it can start working on the next one?

        Very few people these days type that way for extended periods of time, but if your brain wants to get something into the computer, having a 28 wpm bottleneck between them would/should be incredibly frustrating.

  • With a decent keyboard I can get 75 WPM at 99% for long stretches.

    With Gboard, a minor swipe can become a long word, and a long complex swipe can become a short one. And the more erudite a word, the less likely it will be matched, because surely you are a dumbfuck and couldn't possibly have had anything complicated in mind.

  • by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @10:40PM (#59268446)

    Eh, I've said it many times before but I'll say it again here, I would pay for a phone many times its value for a built in physical keyboard for a smart phone. I honestly don;t understand how someone can type as fast on a virtual keyboard as they can on a physical one. Sadly my Motorola Droid (the last of its type) doesn't have the power to compete in a modern context but I would honestly pay high end Apple and Samsung prices to have proper tactile feedback on my keyboard.

    For those unfamiliar with the old school Motorola Droid line up, it had a slide out keyboard from the main screen so while you had a thicker phone (something I never minded) you still had all of the screen space of any other smart phone when you used the physical keyboard. Currently the most I will spend on a smart phone is $300 because I feel that modern high end smart phones have completely failed to differentiate themselves from more moderately prices models. You offer me the "luxury" of a built in physical keyboard though and I'd happily drop a grand on a cell phone.

    • I really miss my Droid 2 and Nokia N810 (not a phone) before that too. It's unfortunate that nobody offers the option. I hate typing on a phone so it limits types of things I use it for.
    • Re:Eh... (Score:4, Informative)

      by preflex ( 1840068 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @02:31AM (#59268828)

      I would pay for a phone many times its value for a built in physical keyboard for a smart phone.

      FxTec [fxtec.com] wants your money.

      And it looks pretty decent [youtube.com]. (No, you dont' have to run SailfishOS. It ships with Android, but there's an unoficcial SFOS port already available.)

      • Truly beautiful, that one. Their marketing dept. is lacking, though; I've never heard about them before.

    • by Wulf2k ( 4703573 )

      For the price range you're talking, surely there exist bluetooth keyboards with phone mounts?

  • Valid comparison (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @10:50PM (#59268476)

    I'm not reading the article (because this is fucking Slashdot), but the article is timing people have have "mastered" a two-thumb technique, and then comparing it to an "average" typist - and the result is still a speed 25% slower. I'm not sure that's a valid comparison. That's like comparing Usain Bolt to an "average" cyclist and then concluding that running is just as fast as a bicycle.

    I'm not the fastest typist in the world but I'm "decent" - I do about 75 wpm if I'm maintaining a relaxed pace, and I have hit up to 125 wpm if I'm really trying to "stretch it" during a typing test. There's no way I can feel ok at 38 WPM. That's also why despite me using a smart-phone a lot throughout the day when I'm on the go, when I get home for the evening I still prefer to do my computing on a desktop.

    • Actually, they said the average, not the high end, was 40 wpm. The high-end was 82 wpm. It was in the article. Which you did not read. Because this is /.
  • Without easy shortcuts, copy, paste, page up/dn, home, end, quick access to caps and special characters, it's hard to argue one would be as productive without a keyboard in programming or office tasks for example. Although the speed of typing and predictive text assistance is interesting I wouldn't get ready to dismiss keyboards any time soon.

    • I think that a really good exercise for these researchers would be to try writing a Perl program on a mobile device.

    • by dohzer ( 867770 )

      A mouse to click exactly where you want will never be beated by randomly jabbing between two letters on a touchscreen when you forget to insert a comma or full stop.

  • The top of the phone users are 75% as fast as the middle of the pack on a proper keyboard.

    That really just sounds like lying with statistics to me. Why not just say where they fall compared to keyboard users? I'd bet it's something like the 95th percentile on the keyboard ranks around the 25th to 30th of keyboard users.

    Yep. They're practically equivalent.

  • This isn't indicating that the average person can enter text amazingly fast on a mobile. What it is indicating is that the keyboard typing ability of the average person has plummeted terribly. If 38 WPM is 25% slower than the average, then that means the average keyboard rate is 50 WPM, which sucks. Everyone in my 8th grade class back in the 80s could do far, far better than 50 WPM (and *everyone* had to take computer class then, and typing is one of the few things we could actually learn and do on those

    • Just took the test. My results (after being awake for 15 hours and about to fall asleep and not particularly feeling it tonight)...

      Your typing speed is 89 words per minute. You type faster than 95.68% of people who took this typing test.
      You left 0.17% of characters uncorrected. You make less errors than 100.00% of people who took this typing test.
      Fastest sentence (errors: 0, wpm: 122):
      "Wasn't nearly as bad as I thought."
      Sentence with highest error rate (errors: 1, wpm: 108):
      "A definitive basic law will be draw up within a year. (A definitive basic law will be drawn up within a year.)"

      I went back and corrected most all my mistakes, which brought the average wpm down a good bit. I can typically sustain 100+ WPM when I'm fresh and awake, and I really don't consider myself a fast typist compared to the pros. Again, just pointing out how low an average of 50 WPM is....

      • I think those are apple and orange comparisons. While the average typing speed may have decreased (you provided no evidence, but I'll take your word for it), the number of people that can type has vastly increased. As a benchmark, you wrote of your eighth-grade typing class, which in my day was an elective (yea, I took it too, I got a D). 80 wpm seems a little high for a single class.

        And outside of that class, there was no typing.

        Today, kids start keyboarding in the third grade, at the latest. And
  • Drunk and stoned, I can do 70 wpm with zero errors on my Model M. Those little gadgets suck.
  • I can type about 40 WPM on mobile but 100 WPM on a real keyboard, proving that if you're actually decent at typing the limitations of mobile REALLY start to show.
  • by Ronin Developer ( 67677 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @12:44AM (#59268710)

    Now, letâ(TM)s have them type at those finger blistering speeds when they arenâ(TM)t operating a motor vehicle.

    I learned to type on an electric typewriter (yes, that old) in the summer of 1977 when I was about to enter 7th grade. I took a typing class so I could better work with computers.

    After that short summer-school course, I was typing 85 WPM - 60 WPM was a passing grade. A year later, on a computer keyboard (vs the powered mechanical keyboard of the Selectruc) I was typing at 110 WPM.
    All this on a keyboard that requires longer finger movements. And, I didnâ(TM)t have to look at the keyboard to type. It was called touch typing for a reason and it was an invaluable skill to learn.

    Handheld devices require shorter distances to type making it possible to type quickly. It modernizes the two finger typist/reporter often portrayed on TV. But, just as the 2 finger typist of old, they also require complete attention if the typist to stare at the keyboard as the keyboard dies not provide tactile feedback for placing your fingers (thatâ(TM)s why those two keys have bumps on them. The rest is mostly muscle memory.

    We who used such keyboards often developed carpal tunnel issues - or so it seemed - from the exaggerated and repulsive finger moments. I seldom see a person getting the surgery today. I wonder why? We still use keyboards donâ(TM)t we? I digress.

    The mobile keyboard requires much smaller hand and finger movements. It also requires the visual attention of the typist because there is no tactile feedback. They rely of the feedback between eyes, fingers and brain. Thatâ(TM)s fine when you can focus on the typing task at hand. Not so great when you should be having your visual focus on something more important, like the road and other cars around you.

    I do think the smartphone keyboard could improve the typing efficiency if used as the input to our desktop and laptop computers.

    All that said, however, I donâ(TM)t drive a car with a full-size QWERTY keyboard in hand (although I have seen some idiots trying to operate a laptop on their lap or strapped to the steering wheel while driving). That would be silly and downright dangerous. As silly and dangerous as taking your hands off the steering wheel and eyes off the road while typing âoewhere u @âoe during your rush hour drive to work.

  • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday October 04, 2019 @12:52AM (#59268728)
    It isn't that mobile typists are fast. It's that Qwerty typists are slow. The Qwerty layout was designed to intentionally slow typists down - to prevent them from jamming a typewriter's striking arms together by typing a sequence of letters too quickly.

    Users of a Dvorak layout can easily reach 150 WPM or higher. And because the extra speed comes from reducing adjacent finger motion to type common words, this is a speed increase that cannot be achieved by typing with just your thumbs on a mobile device.
    • Not only is the commonly promulgated story of how QWERTY was designed almost certainly apocryphal, there is scant evidence that Dvorak has any appreciable advantage.

      https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]

      • Dvorak works by attempting to alternate between your two hands as much as possible. QWERTY, which was designed to keep mechanical typewriters from jamming, also ends up doing something similar since it tries to keep you from having to hid adjacent keys as much as possible.

        As someone who is proficient with both layouts, Dvorak is faster, but I don't find it significantly so. The big difference is that with QWERTY it feels my fingers are flying all over the place, whereas with Dvorak the most commonly used

  • "Our select best of the best managed 25% of the *average* (read: super-slow) keyboard user. Therefore touchscreens *must* be equal (not 25% slower) to keyboards. They must! They must! Otherwise we'd have to admit we're retards!"

    Yeaaah .... don't know how to tell you this ... but ...
    Actually, I do: YOU'RE RETARDS!

  • Typing speed is all well and good, but I am having a lot of trouble believing that spending all day typing out reports with just your thumbs is going to be good for your hands. We've done a lot of work with mice and keyboards to make them ergonomic, or at least reduce how damaging they are to our fingers and wrists - is the same true for cell phones?

  • If I dip sample portable telephone typing fragments from my cranial archive, I may deduce that such word forecasting flim-flam has a positively wretched bullseye rate.

  • What??? It's been decades and I'm slower now (with a slight annnoyingg kkeboounnnce problem), but back in the day I took typewriting and ended up averaging 80 WPM on those newfangled electric typewriters, the IBM Selectrics. (I was a bit slower on the manual ones but had Hulk-like fingers.)

    Now, I really leaned to type in a computing class. I stayed overnight for a project one time, punching 80-col cards. At 6PM I was at 80, at 6AM (no breaks, well besides getting my printout in the next room -- fast r
  • my error rate on a keyboard is very low, i can type pretty fast on my mobile too, except that the error rate is very high, which, i think is logical as the 'keys' are so small. so in general the speed of my mobile typing is lower, because it contains more errors which need to be corrected.

    sometimes i don't bother, hoping people will understand what i'm trying to say even if it's half gibberish.

  • First of all, I fully support the other snarks ... the best group of mobile typists approaches the average of desktop typists. Um, ok ...

    That said, I'm surprised the average mobile typing isn't faster. Do most people really prefer "thumb mashing" to "swyping" (or whatever dragging your finger between letters is called, the early keyboard app that popularized it was Swype)?

    I'm also surprised that predictive text hasn't made more inroads on the desktop. I guess it sorta does with autocorrect ... and it's f

  • One volunteer thumbed out sentences on their mobile phone at a blur-inducing 85wpm, far exceeding the 52wpm that people typically reach on a standard keyboard.

    Said one of the fast thumbers, "I've been roibg 5hie for years!"

  • I recently timed a fast thumb-typer friend - she scored 30 words per minute. Perhaps the fastest thumb-typer could double that. Meanwhile, I can hit over 100 words per minute on a qwerty keyboard. I recall that my high school typing teacher could beat 100 words per minute too.

    Whoever wrote that headline is missing some datapoints.

  • How typing with two fingers (thumbs) on a tiny virtual keyboard (no tactile feedback) can be quicker than typing using my 10 fingers on my keyboards?? I made near zero error when I type on my keyboard and magnitude more when I type on my phone. I can type MANY MORE words per minute on a physical keyboard than on my mobile.

  • In the old days of formal typing tests you lost WPM if you had errors. For example if you typed for one minute and completed 45 words (5 characters per "word"), that would be 45 WPM. If you make mistakes in 10 of those words, then you'd really only have a 35 WPM error corrected rating.

    I'm probably around 15-20 wpm on my phone, but adjusting for errors I am closer to 2 wpm. I don't really get how people can be so much more accurate than me on a touch screen with their thumbs. I had far fewer problems with Pa

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