At least one test says the iPhone soft keyboard is fast enough

Since the day the iPhone was introduced critics have slammed the Apple device for its lack of a QWERTY keyboard - but the iPhone’s soft keyboard may still be an improvement on alternatives in the mobile device space.

Now, we’re not saying this is scientific, but website designer, programmer and manager, Phil Gyford, took  little time to run a typing test on a number of devices - and found the iPhone to be more effective than those fiddly mini-QWERTY physical mobile keyboards.

He tested:

• The Apple Newton MessagePad 2100’s handwriting recognition (1997)
• The Palm Vx’s Graffiti (1999)
• The Palm Treo 650’s hardware QWERTY keyboard (2004)
• The Apple iPhone 3G’s software QWERTY keyboard (2009)
• Pen and paper
• A full-size (MacBook) QWERTY keyboard.

For the test, he chose to write a rather powerful and (given recent bank bailouts, perhaps apposite speech by Labour’s Aneurin Bevan. We’ve popped that speech right at the end of this feature. Meanwhile, we felt you might like a look at the results - table below:

"If it’s not already clear, this isn’t a particularly scientific experiment. If you performed the same tests you’d probably come up with different results depending on your proficiency with the various devices. But here are my results, shorter bars are quicker and better,” Gyford notes.

The sample text:

“I have enough faith in my fellow creatures in Great Britain to believe that when they have got over the delirium of the television, when they realize that their new homes that they have been put into are mortgaged to the hilt, when they realize that the moneylender has been elevated to the highest position in the land, when they realize that the refinements for which they should look are not there, that it is a vulgar society of which no decent person could be proud, when they realize all those things, when the years go by and they see the challenge of modern society not being met by the Tories who can consolidate their political powers only on the basis of national mediocrity, who are unable to exploit the resources of their scientists because they are prevented by the greed of their capitalism from doing so, when they realize that the flower of our youth goes abroad today because they are not being given opportunities of using their skill and their knowledge properly at home, when they realize that all the tides of history are flowing in our direction, that we are not beaten, that we represent the future: then, when we say it and mean it, then we shall lead our people to where they deserve to be led!”

Via: Gizmodo