iPhone Touch Keyboard Lags Behind QWERTY

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.