Why Mobile Keyboard Substitutes Annoy Me

This is mostly a rant/explanation/justification and shouldn't be construed as a criticism of any of the products named.

I type around seventy words per minute on a real keyboard. This is a great asset built up over many years with practice and hard work. It's also a bit of a handicap when it comes to dealing with mobile devices as I quickly get frustrated with the drop off in my ability to express myself textually. Apple's soft keyboard is particularly frustrating since it often/always refuses to go into landscape mode on iPhone's and iPod touches. My hands aren't all that large but the extra space that landscape mode provides is a big win for me.

My Nexus 4 is large enough that I can thumb type fairly effectively in the landscape orientation   Adding Swiftkey makes the experience marginally better but even with a bit of practice I don't gain a lot of speed.

Swype on the other hand is a complete disaster for me. It's a totally different (thought related) paradigm to the keyboard entry I'm used to and it makes my head hurt very badly. It feels like I'm being asked to speak a foreign language while juggling.

I've always been the kind of person who embraces change. It  worries me a bit that I can't get my head around a new fangled data entry paradigm like Swype.

I've gone through all sorts of rationales in my head to justify my failure and even now I'm not sure if I'm coming up with good rationales or just making excuses.

With a bit of luck another method of entering text will come along soon that I'll be able to wrap my head around better. That's the great thing about technology right now. If you don't like a particular approach chances are something new will come along in a year or two.

Mobile Device Sensors (Photo credit: IntelFreePress)