iPhone onscreen keyboard vs WM5 onscreen keyboard

[p9939068]

I've just seen the keynote delivered by Steve Jobs at Apple.com. One thing i've noticed about the iPhone's keyboard is that it's kinda cumbersome to enter capitalized letters, symbols, numbers and punctuations. And I'm not comparing it to hardware keyboard buttons like on the Blackberry.

I'm sure anyone who owns a WM5 enabled PPC will know of the onscreen keyboard. It's so easy to enter a punctuation or number or capitalized letter. To enter, say, an exclamation mark, simply click on "1" and drag upwards. Same thing goes for all other letters. Dragging upwards simply equals to pressing the shift key on normal PC keyboards. Dragging left equals backspace, and dragging right equals space. I noticed that Steve had to press an extra button to go to some sort of a "punctuation view", where the keyboard changes to a list of punctuations. This is going to be very troublesome if you have to enter a lot of punctuations in, say, an email. I hope Apple changes it's current keyboard functionality to somewhat emulate the one in WM5 before it's final release, that'll be really great.

 

[wjp09]

Im sure there will be a button that leads to a screen which will have
Numbers
Symbols Etc on it.

 

[p9939068]

Im sure there will be a button that leads to a screen which will have
Numbers
Symbols Etc on it.

Which is exactly what i said.......

It's the button on the left, which makes it cumbersome.

 

[iHuman]

A thing to remember as well: auto fill, my treo fills in some of the appropriate punctuation, and after a period will atuomatically Cap. the first letter of the next word.
I would assume with the auto fill feature that most of the common punctuation would pop up.

 

[wot_fan]

I agree that having to hit two keys instead of one is more cumbersome. On the other hand, I think having to deal with a stylus to type a message (and to navigate) is much more cumbersome. Assuming the iPhone's keyboard works as advertised, I think it is a much better solution than the keyboard that is on my WM5 phone.

 

[p9939068]

I agree that having to hit two keys instead of one is more cumbersome. On the other hand, I think having to deal with a stylus to type a message (and to navigate) is much more cumbersome. Assuming the iPhone's keyboard works as advertised, I think it is a much better solution than the keyboard that is on my WM5 phone.

It doesn't necessarily have to use a stylus. Since the iPhone's touchscreen allows scrolling using fingers, it can easily work with dragging with fingers too.

 

[wot_fan]

It doesn't necessarily have to use a stylus. Since the iPhone's touchscreen allows scrolling using fingers, it can easily work with dragging with fingers too.

I think you mis-read my post. My stylus comment was in reference to WM devices. The iPhone does not use a stylus.

 

[p9939068]

I think you mis-read my post. My stylus comment was in reference to WM devices. The iPhone does not use a stylus.

lol I think you misread that I misread your post. I was saying Apple should consider integrating certain aspects of WM5's onscreen keyboard API and UI, which certainly is significantly better than what the iPhone has at the moment. and I mentioned that with the iPhone's current functionality, it certainly is possible without the need for a stylus. I didn't say you said iPhone requires a stylus. I think steve jobs made that pretty clear in the demo lol.On another note, I notice a lot of "misreadings" on these boards. it's like people are too eager to reply that they read the first sentence of a post - and skipped the rest. lol.

 

[khunlyon]

lol I think you misread that I misread your post. I was saying Apple should consider integrating certain aspects of WM5's onscreen keyboard API and UI, which certainly is significantly better than what the iPhone has at the moment. and I mentioned that with the iPhone's current functionality, it certainly is possible without the need for a stylus. I didn't say you said iPhone requires a stylus. I think steve jobs made that pretty clear in the demo lol.On another note, I notice a lot of "misreadings" on these boards. it's like people are too eager to reply that they read the first sentence of a post - and skipped the rest. lol.

I think that WotFan was making the point that the iPhone doesn't need a stylus for anything where has the WM5 devices do need a stylus even to type on the onscreen keyboard because of its size. With the iPhone, even if you do have to press an extra button, typing will be faster because the keyboard is larger and you will have two thumbs to type, not just one stylus.

 

[p9939068]

It wont be faster even with 2 fingers if you consider typing an full page businesss email which is going to require a lot of numbers and punctuations.

 

[khunlyon]

It has been faster using my palm (granted it is a standard QWERTY keyboard but it still requires an extra button every time you want to type a punctuation mark) than it was using any WM5 phone i have had. Just IMO iPhone will be more functional.

 

[p9939068]

ummmmmmmm do you know the onscreen keyboard on WM devices can be configured to detect key strokes? just looking at the demo steve jobs did in the presentation, you know it's painfully slow and troublesome to insert punctuations in messages.