Time to ditch those physical keypads

When I was using N900, I had this feeling that a physical qwerty is any day better than Onscreen keypad. After sad death of N900, I moved to Omnia W. At the beginning, I used to struggle with erroneous typing and auto-correct was not helping much either. Time went by, I got used to the layout and key positioning while auto-correct was getting better and better, thanks to the superior algorithm by Microsoft. As a result, my typing speed shot up and am able to type long messages in much less time. This is when I understood one thing. Give some time and he Onscreen keypad (OSK) can literally pwn physical keypad. Few days ago, I came across a bunch of ‘keypad lovers’ on twitter and that is when I understood that there are many who doesn’t know the ‘real use’ of having touch screen phones that only have minimal physical keys, the power of on screen keypad, hence this post. Real estate For smartphones, the more the space display occupies, the better it is for content consumption. Consider two smartphones. Samsung Omnia W and Blackberry Bold 9900. Bold 9900 has 115 x 66 x 10.5 mm for dimension while Omnia W has 115.6 x 58.8 x 10.9 mm. As you can see, though Samsung Omnia W has much bigger display (3.7″ vs 2.8″) it is as tall as 9900 and has less width than Bold 9900. I need not explain which display is better for usage. Thanks to the lack of physical keypad, all that space is used for larger display and the result is much better look, complementing the vibrant UI. Thanks to larger display, video playback becomes much better, browsing website or reading emails is without a doubt infinitely better, scanning through contacts or message becomes easier thanks to longer swipes. Customizability What does OSK offer over physical keypad?

• Portrait and landscape modes
• Switch between numkey pad, T9 and full qwerty (select models only)
• Multiple language options
• Much easier switching between alphabets and special characters
• Faster typing (While selecting a word suggested by auto-correct, it takes one movement of finger to reach the trackball/trackpad for phone with physical keys and a scroll or multiple click to select the right word but a single touch to select the right word). Imagine you are typing a lengthy text and need to do lot of auto-correction. which one do you think will be better?
• Change background and forground colors for the OSK (select OSKs only, purely aesthetic)

Thanks to Android’s open nature, we have seen many 3rd party OSKs. Watch this video demo of SwiftKey 3, arguably the best onscreen keyboard ever designed: When was the last time that you heard about a keyboard learning your typing pattern by looking at your mails/facebook posts/tweets etc or let you type simultaneously in three languages at click of a key, change the color of keys and numbers? yes, Swiftkey X does that. Customization is so good that after a while it becomes an extension of your brain. If case you are looking for something different, there is Swype OSK and this is how it is: Typing by swiping your finger across the screen. If you are one of those that struggle typing with one hand, Swype will be what you should be using. Isnt it different and btw, it is also extremely fast once you get the hang of it. There are numerous OSKs in Google Play store that are optimized for a particular language. Isn’t it amazing that instead of getting stuck with whatever keys the smartphone comes with, you have to option to try a variety of OSKs and pick one that matches your typing style and optimize it further? Native OSKs from Android/iOS/Windows Phone 7 supports multiple languages. The next time you want to chat in a non-english language, all you need to do is select the language from keyboard settings and bam! Speed Remember those days when one used to struggle typing on resistive touch displays that need pressure to register click? Thanks to capacitive touch display panels used by majority of OEMs, typing is extremely fast as one doesnt need to Thanks to superb prediction algorithms used by Microsoft, Swiftkey etc, typing on OSKs is now far better than the same from those resistive touch days. Make the move If you are one of those who have some kind of emotional bonding with keypads, I would suggest you to first pick a touchscreen smartphone that comes with slide out keypad. This way, you can switch between physical qwerty and OSK and slowly try minimizing use of physical qwerty. Try different OSKs and select one that has the layout that suites your typing style and stick to it for a while atleast. These OSKs take some time to build database and they get better and better as you keep using them. My suggestion for you though is to pick Android and then install Swiftkey or Swype. These are absolute best that you get in Android.Go through the tips offered by OSK designer as they are sometimes extremely helpful. Using a 3rd party OSK doesn’t mean installing and start using. Do go through each and every setting available and pick settings that complement your typing pattern. In case you cannot leave the BIS and BB OS, pick those berries that comes with large touchscreen and slide out qwerty. Who known, soon you will find moving to Android or iOS or WP much more tempting and eventually make the move.