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?

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.