July 13, 2010 
In this day and age, as mobile phones become more integral to out everyday lives, text entry has become important. Not only a phone could make phone calls, but sometimes, you got to get your work done. It’s usually email, typing quick notes, and texting. So, which keyboard is better than another?
Hardware keyboards
Let’s start of with most common keyboard, the portrait keyboard. Portrait keyboards are usually common on BlackBerries. These phones are a prime example of how portrait keyboards are designed. What does a portrait keyboard must have? In a portrait keyboard, it’s crucial to have decent spacing and domed keys. The advantage of portrait keyboards are that they are good with one had usability. By all means, typing on a portrait keyboard is excellent, but there are drawbacks. When typing on a portrait keyboard, it might be a little cramped and people with large thumbs are out of luck.
Next up, landscape keyboards. Just like portrait keyboards, they must have good spacing and domed keys. But, landscape keyboards has to be slightly different due to ergonomics. They would have to be off-set, such as the HTC Touch Pro 2 or a standard computer keyboard. As you can see the Droid on the left, the keyboard is laid out in a grid, which is harder to type.
Overall, the most important thing about keyboards in general is about the tactile feedback. That’s a great advantage of physical keyboards, you can actually feel the keys pushing down.
Virtual Keyboards
For those looking for a thinner phone, there are a wide variety of touchscreen keyboards out there. The phone that made touchscreen keyboards usable is the iPhone. Today, the iPhone is still the king in touchscreen keyboards to date. What’s making it so good? Multi-touch. Multi-touch is a technology that Apple engineered, which allows you to have two fingers on a screen and will register those two fingers. Also, you can just tap the screen instead of pushing keys. This helps when you are typing quickly. That’s probably why virtual keyboards are my personal favorite. Now, not all touchscreen phones will have multitouch and those phones usually has resistive touch screens. Now, with all touchscreen phones, you get predictive text while typing. The phone will pop up a suggestion of a word that you misspelled. One thing that’s bad about these kind of keyboards is the lack of tactile feedback. Sure, there’s haptic feedback, but for some people, it’s not enough.
Conclusion
Having good text entry is necessary on any modern smartphone. There are some good options available. Some people require a hardware keyboard, while others are just as efficient on the touchscreen version. As virtual keyboards have become more usable and smarter, more people have migrated in that direction, but there is clearly still a market for the physical variety. Physical keyboards have the tactility, but cost in weight and thickness. Touchscreens can be highly adaptable, but inaccurate if poorly implemented. What do you think is the best method of text entry on a mobile device?
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I still cannot understand the appeal of virtual keyboards. I’m not gonna ignore the fact that they’re popular, but I guess maybe people are either still in the honeymoon stage with it, or simply don’t care about the disadvantages of a a virtual keyboard.
But for me, I prefer a hardware keyboard over a virtual keyboard. Tactile response and muscle-memory are paramount to my desire of hardware keyboards. On the other hand, I find virtual keyboards extremely flawed; why do you think auto-correct is SOOO important for a virtual keyboard? Because too many people mistype characters. I never have to worry about auto-correct on a hardware keyboard because I’m always typing words correctly on them.
The speed of virtual keyboards (or lack thereof) is another reason why I can’t stand them. I tested my typing ability on a virtual keyboard versus a hardware keyboard, and found that my top and average WPM speed was twice to three times as fast on a hardware keyboard than on a virtual keyboard (60 versus 25). With the virtual keyboard, I kept having to go back and correct the mistakes auto-correct can’t correct (like how, when I wanted to use the ‘M’-key, it kept pressing the ‘backspace’-key instead). Sure, maybe I could get more accurate typing on a virtual keyboard if I slowed down a bit, but I can get accurate typing on my Pre at 50-60 WPM without the need to slow down.
Again, I’m not gonna ignore the popularity of virtual keyboards, but I still don’t understand WHY they are. Either way, though, they just aren’t for me.
Er… That is to say, I can’t understand the popularity of virtual keyboards for those who actually prefer it over hardware keyboards.
True, having a virtual keyboard means a thinner, all-in-one phone, no extra moving parts, and a slimmer form factor. So I an understand why some people would stick with the virtual keyboard; it simply a necessary sacrifice to get a sleeker, smaller, thinner phone where you don’t have these extra keys in the way, especially if you rarely used them to begin with (and thus don’t see it as a ‘sacrafice’ to begin with).
BUT if you took two phones that were exactly the same in every single way (same weight, size, OS, etc), except one has a hardware keyboard and the other has a virtual keyboard… some people will STILL stick with the virtual keyboard. WHY they would, THAT’S what I don’t understand. I mean, I would think that if you could have an iPhone 4 that looks like an iPhone 4, except that it can be slid/hinged open down the middle and a hardware keyboard is revealed… people would want THAT over the keyboardless iPhone 4.
I myself prefer a portrait keyboard (Samsung Epix) because of the tactile feedback of the keys — I can feel each key perfectly under my fingers, and can feel exactly when it clicked, without accidentally pressing the keys around it.
However, I don’t think it’s the multi-touch that makes it so good. Rather, it’s the combination of a super-sensitive capacitive touchscreen and well-designed software; I like how the keys pop up and don’t actually register until your finger is lifted off the screen.
A problem with most (not all) landscape keyboards is that they’re either square (like the Droid) or have keys that don’t stick out as much, which makes them harder to press and harder to feel.
The iPhone keyboard is amazing, wonderful, fantastic, awesome, easy, and great, as the Apple keynote says
On the other side of things, the iPod touch doesn’t vibrate, so it has no tactile feedback; I’ve never used an iPhone extensively so I don’t know if a non-jailbroken device has it or not. But that is one of the biggest shortcomings about such a keyboard.
If I’ve ever mentioned the “NookkinPhone” concept, I mentioned smart haptic feedback. This means that pressing down on a key, releasing a key, and pressing a “dead zone” versus a “live zone” (i.e. desktop background vs. desktop icon) would all produce different vibrations. That would make one kick-ass touchscreen.
Great post Jeff! I prefer a hardware keyboard because I type much faster when I know I’m pressing something down instead of assuming.
If you are going to have a virtual keyboard, it HAS TO have a good response, some phones feel like your typing on an old GPS were you have to type slow just to, well type.
Very Well written post. I prefer Virtual keyboards for mobile devices or really small keyboards. Hardware keyboards are for big devices. If the iPad had a Slide out keyboard that would of been the icing on the cake especially if it had a hinge to make it like a regular Laptop. Hardware Keyboards are for bigger devices hands down
Even if the device has a hardware keyboard, it’s almost 100% of the time a very “clunky” device too. :S
Virtual keyboards FTW! Even my Samsung Solstice has tactic feedback.