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Getting used to the iPhone’s keyboard and layout is one of the most important things to consider when buying your new iPhone. It’s a question most people have in the back of their minds: is the iPhone’s virtual keyboard easy to use or not? We’re all completely used to using physical keyboards so you’d be forgiven for being a bit sceptical about Apple’s decision to get rid them completely. So what’s it like, and will you have any trouble getting used to the iPhone’s new touchscreen keyboard? Well, as with most things, the short answer is: it kind of depends on who you ask.
 This isn’t a cop out or anything, we’ve tested the iPhone with a few different people by now. The bottom line is that some people pick it up really quickly and without thinking much about it, others take a long time to speed up and don’t feel very comfortable using the iPhone. We’ve heard complaints that it just feels a bit strange to have to use the touchscreen instead of having physical keys to stroke. Others complain about the size of the keys on the iPhone relative to the size of their fingers. Let’s face it: some people will always have trouble with the keyboards on any mobile (even a Blackberry) so you’d expect these issues to come up with the iPhone as well. (This last complaint is especially unreasonable given the magnifying feature Apple added, more on this later.) One thing’s for sure, it’s definitely the keyboard (or the lack thereof) that will split people when it comes to adopting the iPhone or not. We think it’s often the quality a mobile phone’s keyboard that is the deciding factor for whether or not it will be successful. With the iPhone, Apple definitely took a big gamble… And in balance, we think they won it. Overall, we’re pretty sure few of you will have any problem at all getting used it, given enough time. It might take some of you a bit longer to accommodate yourselves to how the iPhone reacts to key strokes and how things are laid out, but overall only a small minority will find these issues remain after a few weeks. In fact, it’s the iPhone’s lack of physical keyboard that makes it such an original design, a device that people want to pick up and play with. And that, in our view, is why the iPhone will be remembered as a milestone for mobile phones overall. We’ve seen many attempts at getting rid of the convention mobile phone keyboard over the years, but we can’t remember a single touchscreen solution that could stand the test of time. Even if some of them seemed pretty good at first, you simply had to ditch them to revert to the traditional physical keyboard for any sustained use. For those people that use mobiles for a lot of texting or emailing, touchscreen keyboards simply weren’t a viable option. Until the iPhone came along. Don’t get us wrong. It took a few of us quite some time (think days, not weeks) to feel completely comfortable with the iPhone’s virtual keyboard. After all, after years of typing on physical keys, it isn’t very intuitive to completely forget being guided by physical sensation and purely using sight and sound (and memory) instead. But we persevered and attempted to trust the iPhone’s auto-correction and input-guidance tools as much as possible. Unlike the Blackberry for example, this works by showing you one alternative at a time rather than a list of words, until you type the next letter, making it quite user-friendly. Although it’s fair to say a few weeks down the line we’re now pretty comfortable with the iPhone and don’t really give it a second thought, we don’t think we’ll ever be as fast as with other devices (namely the Blackberry). But speed isn’t everything and you realise it’s actually quite pleasant (and a lot of fun) to use the iPhone’s interface rather than the usual keyboard/screen divide. The first thing which makes it very easy to know what you’re doing on the iPhone is the magnifying feature: whenever you type a key, you’ll see it magnified above that key’s location. That makes it very simple to know exactly what you’re doing and as a result helps you gain confidence and speed without having to check the screen for the output every time you type a letter.  Also, we particularly like using the keyboard when surfing the net using Safari – i.e. in horizontal format. You’ll find that the iPhone’s large screen allows the keys to be pretty large indeed and very easy to use. Apple haven’t used a horizontal view for the keyboard when using other applications because of the amount of space it takes in this format, so that makes sense. Oh and one great feature when typing URLs using Safari is that the space bar disappears. Instead, you have keys for full stops (this is missing in the standard keyboard view – more on this below), forward slashes (“/”) and dot com (“.com”). This is a fantastic way to save time, we can’t believe it hasn’t been done before on other mobiles (to our knowledge). We also like the fact that when you’re not using the iPhone in silent mode, you can hear each key when you press it. This helps compensate for lack of physical reference points when touching the screen. If you want a demonstration of how fast you can actually type (and of the sound each click makes when you type), take a look at this video (don't worry about the black and white fuzzy image at the beginning, that's normal): As you might expect however, we do have a few issues with the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard: - What happened to the full stop? It’s infuriating to have to go to the symbols section to select the full stop to end a sentence. Now this is one thing that will certainly slow people down when using the iPhone. We’re pretty sure another key for the full stop wouldn’t have taken up too much space and it would have made our lives much easier. There is a solution to this problem however. If you keep your finger pressed on the “Numbers” key, you can slide it to the full stop symbol before letting go. Not ideal, but definitely works;
- Unfortunately, unlike normal keyboards, you need to wait until you’ve lifted your finger off your first key before pressing the second, otherwise it won’t register it. Not great for picking up speed: you need to be precise and patient and tap the keys one by one;
- Using the iPhone’s dictionary can be a frustrating experience. In theory, to add something to your dictionary all you need to do is type the word then, when you get the dictionary’s auto-correct alternative, simply press on the word instead. Sounds pretty simple. Except you’ll find that you’re also adding words here and there by mistake by first ignoring the auto-correct suggestion, adding a letter and then going back one space over that letter. Maybe it’s just us, but we’ve found a few odd words popped up in the dictionary over time. And unfortunately (you’ll like this), you can’t clear one-off words from the dictionary file (it’s all or nothing) and you can’t save a previous version of it either. Hmmm…;
- If you’re typing out numbers using the keyboard, for some reason if you use the space bar, the iPhone reverts to letters;
- It seems to be all or nothing when it comes to using the caps lock function on the iPhone. As a standard, you’ll find caps lock is turned off, but you can activate it by going in through the settings. Once you’ve done this, for some reason you can’t use the shift key to alternate. Not great, and it doesn’t help that all letters look capitalized regardless whether you’re in upper or lower case either. That said, to use caps when in normal mode, you can use the same trick as with full stops: press shift, slide your finger to the capitalised letter and let go;
- Unfortunately, you don’t have any editing tools on the iPhone: you can’t copy, cut or paste text using the keyboard, which is a shame.
Overall, we really like the virtual keyboard. It’s not for everyone, and some of our friends definitely struggled to get used to it. Those people are few and far between however, and the vast majority will pick it up before long. Sure, some people are better than others at familiarising themselves with layout and interface, but overall Apple have definitely done a good job, in great part thanks to the magnifying tool. Granted, the iPhone’s virtual keyboard will never be as easy to use as the Blackberry Curve for example; but after all, it’s not really supposed to compete with ‘work’ mobile devices and is also weaker for email or for office applications generally. That means that for a day-to-day, leisure mobile device, the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard works pretty well indeed. For once, you don’t find yourself longing for the comfort and reference points of physical keys.
This is one part of the iPhone where we think Apple have just about pulled it off. And in doing so, Apple have made the iPhone a mobile device to remember. We'll leave you with another video demonstrating how to use the Apple iPhone's virtual keyboard so you know exactly what to expect when you win your own iPhone! |
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