I didn’t expect this to happen but I’ve reached the point where an on-screen keyboards is better than hardware keyboards on my mobile devices. The soft keyboard on the Galaxy Tab is now my fastest mobile text-input device.

Can you remember the on-screen keyboard delivered that was delivered with XP? Oh….my…God!

It was meant for accessibility and emergency use and it was basic, to say the least. The XP Tablet Edition keyboard wasn’t much better so it’s no wonder many of us went for hardware keyboards on our mobile devices. I went for quite a few of them.

The appeal of a weightless on-screen keyboard was always there but in practice, the execution was terrible. Either the devices were too heavy or the keyboards just weren’t responsive enough. Resistive touchscreens, screen sizes,  lack of haptics and dumb software didn’t help. Sure, the hardware keyboards were often poor too, Using long-throw keys for thumb-typing isn’t optimal but there were some good ones out there.

With the introduction of capacitive screens and intelligent on-screen keyboards, things started to change. The iPhone led and my own experience hit a peak with the HTC Desire. Still, portrait mode isn’t easy on these single-hand devices and landscape mode was blocking most of the screen so I still longed for something that slides-out but when I got the Galaxy Tab, the crossover point was reached. I am now faster on the Tab than on any other hard or soft mobile keyboard. With concentration, I can reach 80% of the speed I have on a full size keyboard and without, an easy 70% and I still have over 50% of my screen free when I’m using it.

How am I using it?

See this article with video demo. I’m using the device in portrait mode and thumbing on the Samsung keyboard with about 30% haptic feedback strength. Since that video was made, I’m even faster.

The low weight means that device doesn’t get top heavy. The width means the thumbs can cross-over across the keyboard.

The capacitive screen and haptics work quickly and give the feeling of real physics although the OSK can get held back occasionally meaning you have to type ahead and hope it buffers. It usually does but that problem definitely needs sorting out.

The intelligence in the Samsung Keyboard is great. I have to assume they are using variable hit-patches. (e.g. the hit area of the U increases if you type a Q and so on) and XT9 predictive text is more value than hindrance once you get used to it. I don’t use word completion but you’ll see the settings I do use below…

That combination of virtual physics, size/weight and intelligence has me using the Tab for far more than I thought possible. I’ve written 5 reasonable sized blog posts and a ton of emails, Tweets, IM’s, comments and annotations. I’ll be taking it to CES and I bet I use it a lot. Thank goodness the battery life is good!

Landscape mode is a problem for the on-screen keyboard but I rarely use the device in that mode. Video playback usually forces it along with the occasional rotate needed for photos.

Could it be improved? Yes. I mentioned the occasional pause above and I think there’s scope for a wider screen with 800 pixels width. I’d also  like to see an option for a dedicated number row. Haptics can always be improved too but right now I’m very happy and importantly, no longer lusting after hardware keyboards on my mobile devices.

Anyone else experienced this cross-over point with a mobile on-screen keyboard?

It’s only been two days since we got our hands on the iPad, but I wanted to get this out there early as there are a lot of questions. I’ve made a video to try to give you a sense of what it really looks like to type on the iPad in real conditions. I’ve also put together a chart using a simple web based typing speed test which I ran on the iPad and on my computer for comparison:

Don’t read too deeply into the Mistakes row, as some of the mistakes shouldn’t really have been counted due to the fact that the iPad does auto-correct some words (something that didn’t sit well with the typing test I used). What is significant is the WPM. While this test wasn’t scientific, I would say that the results do a good job of representing the experience in each given mode, but I was surprised to find that I typed at the same WPM in portrait and landscape touch typing. Landscape touch typing felt much more comfortable because the keys are larger than the portrait keyboard. For the touch typing sections, I sat the iPad flat on a table in front of me and I typed with all fingers, just like you’d do on a real keyboard. For the thumb tests, I held the iPad in my hands while typing with my thumbs.

I’m pretty impressed with the speed that could be achieved with the touch typing in both portrait and landscape modes. 57 WPM (and better than average accuracy due to good auto-correction and other factors) is pretty darn good speed for an on screen keyboard (OSK). The issue here is that top speed can only be achieved while you are sitting down and can sit the iPad in front of you. You won’t be walking around with the iPad churning out 57 WPM while on the go.

The iPad’s OSK is probably the best OSK yet implemented on a slate device of this size. I’m sure that there are some Tablet PC gurus pulling their hair out right now, but I definitely have never seen an OSK that is this effective on any other device of this size. This is due to a combination of good hardware (accurate and responsive capacitive touchscreen) and intelligent software (auto-corrections and invisible landing area increases based on the word that you are likely to type). It may be the best, but the experience really doesn’t feel quite right. It is especially uncomfortable when typing with one’s thumbs, but unfortunately this is probably the best way to have meaningful typing ability while being mobile with the iPad. The other alternative is to hold the iPad in one hand and type with the other, which works fine for short URL entries, but wouldn’t be my method of choice for writing out a few sentences. After typing a short paragraph for the typing test, with my thumbs in landscape mode, my wrists quickly started to become sore. I couldn’t see that being a viable method of input for more than a few sentences. I mentioned that the keyboard would be an issue in my article from February — The Big Flaw with Big Slates (Yes, Even the iPad), and I’m finding it to be the biggest challenge to the usability of the iPad so far.

What sort of solutions could Apple have considered rather than simply a big OSK? Well perhaps Apple could have looked into something like Swype which inputs words by recognizing particular shapes that one creates while dragging a finger around to letters on a keyboard. A multitouch capacitive screen such as the one on the iPad is also ripe for a Dial Keys split-keyboard implementation. I hope they at least tossed the idea around during the creation of the iPad, and I also hope that they are still considering it. I’m really dying for Dial Keys on the iPad right now!

Edit: Prompted by turn.self.off from the comments, I just did a quick test to see how many keys the keyboard would allow to be pressed at once and the answer is 11 — one more than the natural number of digits on one’s hands… unless, of course, you are Antonio Alfonseca.

More than the actual product itself, I was excited for Apple’s iPad unveiling because I was waiting for them to show the world their innovative solution to input on a large keyboard-less device. I was very surprised to find that they didn’t offer anything innovative. Instead, the iPad uses a simple iPhone style keyboard (albeit a larger one). The inability to efficiently input text on these large slates is going to be responsible for their extinction.

The companies making these big slates, in an attempt to justify the slow keyboard input, would like us to think that slates are all about content consumption. And surely they are; larger slates will be great for feeling like the web is in your hands. But there is a certain degree of input that will always be necessary to access the content that we’d like to consume (until computers can read our minds, that is…) and people will always want to be able to effectively write short messages when they are connected to the web. My iPhone is all about consumption of web content as well, and I type on it all the time. From tasks, to tweets, good input is a necessity.

Apple changed the landscape of mobile devices by realizing that a well designed on-screen-keyboard (OSK) could have serious benefits, such as being able to remove the keyboard when it wasn’t being used, and being able to dedicate the entire screen to the content.

A good OSK works great with a device that is small enough for one’s thumbs to reach nearly all the way across the screen. The nature of a thumb-board means that only two digits are in the way of the screen, offering great visibility, which is very important for an OSK because of the obvious lack of tactile information. Even the way that the device is held makes the OSK thumb-board concept work well — thumbs come in from the side and are naturally lifted away from the screen allowing the user to see the next key that will be pressed.

As the size of slates increases, people start doing that awkward thumb stretch to try to reach a key that is out of range. In order to do the thumb stretch maneuver, one must change up the grip on their device just to hit one key, then switch it back when they are finished. This slows down the rate of input and starts to break down the overall experience of using the device.

The real issue is when slates get so big that thumb typing isn’t even viable. How can one use something like the iPad while walking? The only way seems to be holding the device with one hand and poking at the keyboard with the index finger with the other. Even if the iPad is sitting in one’s lap, trying to touch-type on an OSK will be a pain. Why? For a few reasons; the first of which is visibility. While the grip on a small mobile device means that thumbs can move quickly and effectively away from the screen, attempting to lay your hands on a large slate with an OSK will sufficiently block the keyboard from view.

What’s more, there are no palm rests on these devices. The experience is not going to be comparable to typing on a physical keyboard. Many of these slates shooting for the edge-to-edge screen look, leaving no room for one to rest their hands if the objective is to touch-type with the OSK. What is someone to do, float their hands above the screen and touch it only with their fingers when they type? If the only alternative is typing with a single finger, users will be begging for something better.

Apple may have anticipated some of this typing frustration by also announcing two accessories which both aim to assist the user in typing. One was a dock that has a keyboard, and the other is a case which props the device up on an angle which is supposed to make the device easier to type on. While these might reduce the annoyance of poor input, accessories and add-ons are not a final solution to the problem. These two accessories, unveiled in the same announcement as the iPad, show that Apple realizes that typing on the iPad is a weakness. Eventually, users may be asking “Why do I have to dock my device to use a decent keyboard? Why isn’t there a better way? inch

A well designed OSK is a major blessing for a small device with a screen size that makes it thumb-typeable, but once you get out of the screen-size range that enables thumb-typing, input will become painfully slow. The door is left open for someone to come up with a good alternative solution to giant OSKs. I’d like to say that written input would be a good one, but that’s already been done quite well on the tablet PC platform, but somehow hasn’t managed to catch on.