iPhone Touch Keyboard Lags Behind QWERTY

August 17, 2007 By Nick Mokey

A new study shows QWERTY phone users took about twice as long to enter text on the iPhone when first introduced to it.

There’s just something about hard keys. When many phone connoisseurs first discovered that the iPhone would abandon hard keys in favor of a soft virtual keyboard that appears on a screen, they were skeptical – and it turns out their skepticism was well-founded. Research firm User Centric released the results of their iPhone keyboard study last week, which found that new iPhone users had trouble adapting to the phone’s interface.

Although the iPhone keyboard may elicit different reactions from different people, User Centric did their best to quantify its user-friendliness. They rounded up 20 novice text messagers, allowed them one minute to familiarize themselves with the iPhone, and then conducted a series of speed tests using 12 standard messages, on their phones and on iPhones. In general, those who were used to solid QWERTY keyboards took twice as long to enter messages and made more errors on the iPhone.

Employees at User Centric are aware that the study doesn’t represent an absolute difference between QWERTY keyboards and the iPhone keyboard, since participants naturally had more familiarity with their own phone. They do claim that the study confirms the difficulty that new iPhone users will have adjusting to its interface.

Showing 5 comments

dokein at 8:26pm 21st September 2007 I tried the keyboard on the iPod touch at an Apple Store yesterday, and was rather disappointed. Marginally better than triple-tapping on a cell phone keyboard, but certainly nowhere near as fast as a really keyboard. With practice, it might get close for general typing, but you're pretty much screwed if you're trying to enter a strong password (mixed case, numbers, and special characters) to log into your webmail account in Safari.
Mikhailovitch at 10:41pm 18th August 2007 I have no opinion personally as to which method of input would be best. Perhaps someone could do a properly designed study, unlike this present bit of nonsense, to find out.
Johnny Appleseed at 9:37pm 18th August 2007 One minute to familiarize themselves with iPhone vs potentially years of familiarity with their own phone? That should invalidate the study right there.
As stated above, once users get comfortable with the iPhone's input method they can potentially type faster than on their previous phone.
eas at 12:02pm 17th August 2007 The study participants weren't "novice text messengers," they were novice iPhone users. All the participants sent at least 15 texts a week with their existing phones using either QWERTY keyboards or multi-tap (which seems bizzare, since most phones support predictive entry).

I personally hadn't done much text entry on a mobile phone until I got my iPhone. After getting up to speed and learning to trust the predictive entry system, I'm pretty happy with my speed. The only annoyance is that it often processes my keystrokes faster than I want to enter them. This seems to happen most often when entering data into a web form in Safari. I don't think I've ever had the problem with any of the other apps that accept text entry.
bobm at 9:24am 17th August 2007 In the interest of thoroughness,you might have added that most reviewers, including Walt Mossberg and David Pogue, as I recall, said that after they had adjusted to it, they were able to type just as fast or faster on the iPhone than they were on the QWERTY keyboards.