Database Users

Keyboard - Are you happy?

Hi All,
I've tried for the past several days to find any word on what it's like typing on the TD2/Pure keyboard and cannot seem to find anything substantial. I like the look and feel of the phone and think I want one. However, I need to know from someone who has had one for a while what it's like typing on it daily. Speaking for me, I've got short stubby fingers and thumbs. Is that a problem? Will I end up using the stylus most of the time?
Also in the store, the keyboard wouldn't switch to landscape in anything other than the messaging applications. When I tried to use it in Word, it stayed in portrait mode.
Thanks in advance.

I've had my Pure for 3 days. I been using the Fuze for the past year. It's taking a little while to get use to the on-screen keyboard. I too have fat fingers. A friend of mine just bought a Sprint Hero. I really like the on-screen keyboard that comes with it. If I can find a similiar one for the Pure I'll be a lot happier. In the meantime I'll keep using the stylus when I need to type quickly and accurately.

had my Topaz since may 7th, many texts every day and its good Not as fast as a physical keypad, and you cant touche type well with it ofc. BUT, it is easy. It has auto correction built in, so you almost always get the right words. I run mine atm in Phone keypad mode, (2abc 3def etc) because the keys are bigger, altho the full Qwerty is also good
Also i by no means have small hands and i almost never use the stylus ;P

I got fat fingers as well and no nails. (I bite) and I can say I type really quick on the keyboad. I would type quick on the original HTC Touch aswell and that screen sucked. What I've noticted is that people use the tip and or pad of their thumb which blocks the screen. I type and use the phone by using the inner top edge of my thumbs. I get a bettr view of the screen and can type very accurtate in portrait view. I use both thumbs when typing aswell.
Oh and this is on the qwerty keyboard. People are surprised at how fast I can type on it. Way faster than using a normal keyboard. (1-9) I would a like to sugest to try out the 20key qwerty if you are having problems with the full qwrety. type a blackberry.

This is the first device I've used that didn't have actual keys, and for the first couple of hours, I got frustrated and resorted to the stylus. However, after another couple of hours making a good attempt to get used to the keyboard, I did, and my accuracy and speed are both pretty good now.

I use Fingerkeyboard and I am very happy. Of course it was better on my blackstone than on my topaz due to the bigger screen, but I found that I can type faster on this on-screen keyboard than I could on the physical keyboard of the xperia... On-screen keyboards are more sensitive IMO.

Well - After everything I had read and studied, I made the leap yesterday and purchased the Pure. It was a bit awkward at first and the typing was pretty much hit and miss. After burning through a few emails and texts, I think I've got the hang of it. It does seem that part of my problem is the screen calibration is a bit off. I figured this out by using the stylus in the contact list and if I hit the "T", the "S" list came up. The typing was easier than I expected but it's amazing how much screen real estate the keyboard takes up in landscape mode.
Thanks for all the replies.

Yeah you can recallibrate in the settings, will help Glad you got one.

I love it!
Here's a tip... Instead of pecking at the letters, if you hold your finger on the letter for just a tad longer, it will "popup" the letter. Got the wrong one, just roll your finger a little until the right one comes up.
You don't have much time to do this, but it's very easy to get used to!

OracleBlue said:
Well - After everything I had read and studied, I made the leap yesterday and purchased the Pure. It was a bit awkward at first and the typing was pretty much hit and miss. After burning through a few emails and texts, I think I've got the hang of it. It does seem that part of my problem is the screen calibration is a bit off. I figured this out by using the stylus in the contact list and if I hit the "T", the "S" list came up. The typing was easier than I expected but it's amazing how much screen real estate the keyboard takes up in landscape mode.
Thanks for all the replies.
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That's strange that it's off like that. My Topaz came precalibrated just fine. Go to Settings in Touchflo then Menu>All Settings>System>Screen and you should be able to re-calibrate. If its like the original TD2 it you won't be able to re-calibrate unless you flash a cooked ROM.
Do you use both thumbs or one hand and one finger to type. Both thumbs work grand for me.

The keyboard itself is wonderful, nice layout and everything. But sometimes even if I press kinda hard the key I pressed don't show up which means I always have to press kinda hard to be sure to get the key I pressed.

Does anybody have the 20 key keyboard .cab? I might give it a go again. Can't seem to find it...

ArtieQ said:
The keyboard itself is wonderful, nice layout and everything. But sometimes even if I press kinda hard the key I pressed don't show up which means I always have to press kinda hard to be sure to get the key I pressed.
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Hold they key on the screen it should pop up the letter to verify. Maybe that's a euro td2 vs usa pure thing?
My unlocked diamond did this out of the box, so hmmm.

syntrix said:
Hold they key on the screen it should pop up the letter to verify. Maybe that's a euro td2 vs usa pure thing?
My unlocked diamond did this out of the box, so hmmm.
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Maybe I confused you a little, I mean when I press on the screen nothing happens which means I have to press harder than I want to. It might be the TD2 screen itself because if you press on it you can feel that goofy thing, it's like some plastic glass instead of real glass (like on Diamond).

I gotcha.
I have a diamond too, and the screen seems just the same.
I have noticed that the actual LCD is sunk a little more down on the TD2 over the TD.
I actually welcome this as there's less glare and better readability of the screen.

try cliquick keyboard its the largest i can find lol

Multi-touch Keyboard

We all know that multitouch is capable on the popular G1 and myTouch. Now I was wondering if adding such a feature onto the virtual keyboard is a can-do. All for the sake of exponentially increasing text insertion speed.

I don't see a reason to use multitouch for text input. What should happen if you enter 2 keys at the same time?

MarcLandis said:
I don't see a reason to use multitouch for text input. What should happen if you enter 2 keys at the same time?
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the point of multi-touch on the vk is to increase the speed of texting meaning u can press a key directly after another without fear of the keys not registering. it really helps when holding the phone sideways because when text i start texting too fast and keys dont register correctly. thats y im still partial to the hard keyboard.

MarcLandis said:
I don't see a reason to use multitouch for text input. What should happen if you enter 2 keys at the same time?
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The reason for multi-touch is simple... take a look at the iPhone, if you hit one key and then before releasing it hit another it registers both hits. So that way you can type much quicker! Try this on the android/htc/better keyboards and you'll see that if you hit two keys at the same time, it will register a key that is almost always half-way in between the two.
However, I think Google is having a hard-time coding for not simultaneous taps but for timing. Meaning that if you hit both the 'K' and the 'N' keys at the same time while trying to type the word 'KNOW', the software not only has to recognize that 2 keys were hit; but has to resolve which one was hit first or was likely meant to be hit first. So that way, it can say
"hey, he hit the 'K' and the 'N' at virtually the same time; BUT, because he hit the 'K' .00002 seconds before the 'N' I'll put register and display the 'K' before the 'N'"
Multi-touch in the browser is probably not easy to code for but it certainly is much easier than the keyboard because pinching only requires the software to recognize that two fingers are on the screen, not that one was there before the other.
But, I think Google needs to work on the usability of the keyboard first. The screen-size on the magic and keyboard might restrict them somewhat but damn the virtual keyboard layout is verry bad... I always hit the "M" key when trying to hit the "DELETE" key.. And why not auto-popup the keyboard when you enter messaging? and why is there the "smiley" key in messaging? WASTE OF SPACE?!?

I thought the HTC keyboard sorta-of had multi-touch support, no?

How does one "sorta" have multi-touch support?

I would love to see this. My biggest problem is not registering a space in between words because I hit it too quickly and then the autocorrect can't fix the issue. Maybe a 3rd party keyboard developer would be interested in incorporating this into their app?

I believe better keyboard has multi touch.

exile20 said:
I believe better keyboard has multi touch.
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It does not, unfortunately.

TonyDeez said:
How does one "sorta" have multi-touch support?
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I think I only got it working with the bottom row of keys.

I can't fathom how one would get the Dream/Magic (G1/myTouch3G) to have a fully functional multitouch keyboard. The multitouch capacity of these devices is hackish to say the least; if the horizontal or vertical coordinates of the touched points coincide to within a rather wide range (comparatively speaking) then the device is incapable of registering more than one touch -- and it wouldn't necessarily be /either/ of the points originally touched.
That would seem to me to be a game-breaker.
Unless I misunderstand? Perhaps the Droid or Cliq are different.

IConrad01 said:
The multitouch capacity of these devices is hackish to say the least; if the horizontal or vertical coordinates of the touched points coincide to within a rather wide range (comparatively speaking) then the device is incapable of registering more than one touch -- and it wouldn't necessarily be /either/ of the points originally touched.
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Reading this got me curious so I went back to Luke Hutchison's blog posts on the matter and played around with his multitouch demo apps here and it looks like there are indeed problems. I then found this post which explains his observations on the matter.
Even with these limitations, though, it's hard to say if there would be much of an issue. I think this "rather wide range" you speak of is small enough. The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed to spread out keys to minimize "jams" of neighboring keys. This works in our favor, making the distance between possible close-to-simultaneous keypresses rather large on average. If I play with the virtual keyboard a little bit, I notice that if my fingers are hitting neighboring keys I don't have problems with simultaneous presses because I have to move my first finger out of the way to make room for the second. I do have unusually large fingers, but give it a try yourself.
Who knows though...it may indeed be too inaccurate.
Also, it looks like there's a similar thread to this one over here.

The trouble, as I understand it, is that you could not touch two points on the same horizontal "read" line of the device, at the same time. You could probably do top row and bottom row as multitouch, but not middle row and anything else. (Assuming three rows total.)
It's not just about touching two keys simultaneously but that if the same capacitors are triggered horizontally, then the device will read this as one -- confused -- input. And if the same capacitors are triggered horizontally, the same will occur.

It is my understanding that the Motorola Milestone's Eclair keyboard is multi-touch. Can anyone confirm that?

i can conform that there is a multi-touch keyboard. Ive actually tested it out. They rebuild the keyboard and made capable of it. I think its called HTC VK keyboard. And yes i can press 2 keys at the same time too.
I have a t mobile Touch pro 2, love the keyboard but i would rather go back to android. Its almost new if anyone is interested let me know in a pm. thanks.

If I'm not mistaken, the HTC Keyboard on the hero has multitouch.

ajones7279 said:
If I'm not mistaken, the HTC Keyboard on the hero has multitouch.
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sorry but you are mistaken. the hero does not even have real multitouch in the driver. one finger gives a small dot, while a second finger would increase the dot size that is reported from the driver, the bigger the distance between fingers the bigger the dot size. this way the pinch-to-zoom works, but it does not actually detect a second touch.
you can see this with various application that show the touch graphically, for example cracked screen or steamy window.

Then I stand corrected. Just relaying something I heard. But doesn't mulititouch have to be written into the program? Like how Picsay had multitouch on the Droid whereas other apps didn't? Just throwing things out there.

kendong2 said:
sorry but you are mistaken. the hero does not even have real multitouch in the driver. one finger gives a small dot, while a second finger would increase the dot size that is reported from the driver, the bigger the distance between fingers the bigger the dot size. this way the pinch-to-zoom works, but it does not actually detect a second touch.
you can see this with various application that show the touch graphically, for example cracked screen or steamy window.
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Dunno about the Hero, but the Eris definitely does have it.
Also- multitouch DOES have to be coded into the application. The driver isn't important at all if the application itself only supports one input.

Interesting new tweet by cyanogen:
@paracycle multitouch is built into keyboardview on eclair. i've backported this for the next CM-4.2 release.
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Love my HD2 but my fingers are too big for it? :S

Hi Guys,
Just got my HTC HD2 last night on O2 Ireland (Silent release yesterday),
Love the phone but one thing that is really annoying me is the onscreen keyboard, the qwerty and compact qwerty are useless to me, even in landscape mode, but I can use the numeric keypad one although I often have the odd mistake here unless I type really slow and think about it.
Basically what normally happens is as I have quite big fingers, sometimes I tough most of the key I want and a small amount of the key underneath, which is really irritating me as it's taking me 10x longer to send a message than it does on my N95 8GB.
I love the phone but the slow text entry really is making me stick with the N95 8GB right now. I was wondering if anyone had any advice? I wish I could have some nice bigger keypad like when you put the pin in when you turn the phone on and that would be much easier for me!
Is there any way I can use or install any other text input options, or what about bluetooth keypads (Keyboards not really acceptable as they're too big but a keypad could work)
Cheers for any advice

Dear JustinJJ,
I had the same problem, until I relaised I had a hardware screen problem. There are a number of tests you can do to find out if you have a hardware problem.
Just have a look on the forum.
Regards and best wishes with your typing.
Oh, just to let you know, I am on my third HD2 in less than a month, and this is the first time I can type the A-Z without making a mistake. So it was hardware not my fingers.
ADC (Yateley, UK)

Try another keyboard, like Swype?
It needs lots of practice, especially when you were using phone with keypad in the past.

I was going to try Swype over the weekend and see how that goes, it looks quite good but I have doubts because of the much smaller key size which makes me worry a little bit.
I've already tried to recalibrate the screen which helped a little bit, but it's still nowhere near as nice as typing with an actual phone keypad.
It really annoys me as I love the phone so much for everything else apart from text entry!

Practice makes perfect seriously though, it just takes a bit of time to get used to it. Back in December someone made a handy little programme - I think it's called touch mark - which plots where you touch the screen and compares it to where you should be touching the screen, quite handy to "retrain" your finger/eye coordination... will go see if I can find the link to it.
Edit: found it http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=594158&highlight=touchmark

going from resistive to capacitive screen is a big jump; you WILL make a lot of mistakes on the "fat finger" phenomenon, but eventually you will get better (right now i can type faster and with better accuracy on the iphone screen than my X1a keyboard )

Isadora said:
Practice makes perfect seriously though, it just takes a bit of time to get used to it. Back in December someone made a handy little programme - I think it's called touch mark - which plots where you touch the screen and compares it to where you should be touching the screen, quite handy to "retrain" your finger/eye coordination... will go see if I can find the link to it.
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Click to collapse
Indeed,
Touch mark can be quite helpfull to retrain your touching skills
Grtz,
Degake

I use swype and it's mostly great (using it now, in fact) quite surprising how inaccurate you can be with it and it still gets it right.
regarding the capacitive screen in general, the angle of your finger can make all the difference, the pad being recognized much more accurately than the tip/edge, and even the temperature.... cold dry skin = jumpy detection.
I also found that no matter how much I align the screen, for best results my aim must always be slightly up and left if where I'm aiming....not much, just a bit.

I used Cootek touchpal on my HTC HD. I use the predicitive text feature with the 3 letters in each box. It does a hell of a job predicting my words. I find that it types faster than when I was on my blackberry. As in all things new you have to train yourself on it and eventually it becomes natural.
The only typing I never wanted to master was the number pad t9 crap. I got so fed up with it I didn't use it went to blackberry...

I went from a SE W910i with a physical numpad to the HD2 and the first week typing on the HD2 was torture, I dreaded typing a simple "On my way" SMS and kept everything as short as possible. After a week or two I started understanding how it works and started retraining myself in regards to hitting the right key. A few things I noticed are that you don't press the key like you would on a physical keyboard so you need a much "lighter" touch and try to just tap the screen with the tip of your finger. Patience is one of your biggest friends when learning to type and I've sat down with my HD2 for dedicated sessions on typing and have learnt a lot. I also avoid using my thumbs as they are too wide and flat and tend to not hit the keys I want, I usually hold the phone in one hand and "type" with the index finger of the other hand. Now I can type as fast as I would on a normal numpad keyboard but not as fast as I could with my G1.
I've owned a N95 and found the keys were too small and I usually hit more than one at a time which was most annoying. So I don't think your fingers are too big.
I've never tried any other keyboard program but Swype looks like it could be loads of fun as well as more accurate. So give it a week or two to get used to typing and if you still have problems then you may have a faulty screen.

i also use touchpal as it has a great auto correction. first i used the three letters in one box, but now i'm learning full qwertz to be more flexible.
never tried swype but this and touchpal seems to be the most famous osk's around.
a good way for me to reduce the sensitivity and also reduce errors is to apply a screen protector. i got one from - i think e-cell, which was recommended by a lot of users here at devs.

Tried swype, that was awful, partly because my fingers were too big and partly because I had to think about the letters and stop when moving my finger which messed the word generation up.
Tried Touchpal and found that a little better than the built in keyboard in keypad mode but the fact they moved the space to the right of the 9 key really messed it up for me, if they had it underneath it would be perfect but it really messes me up right now and the key after hitting it I always end up hitting wrong.
Then I tried Cliquick! I was in love straight away with it's huge keys this is the only editor I can type accurately with, and not make any mistakes by accidentally pressing the wrong keys. The only problem was this has no predictive text or no standard hardware style keypad mode so it is a little slow having to use multi-tap and an unfamiliar layout, but least it's accurate and less frustrating even if it is slow.
Does anyone know if they plan to release a predictive text add in or perhaps a standard keypad layour, or is there any plug-ins I can use to achieve the same effect.

So it isn't just ME...
samsamuel said:
...I also found that no matter how much I align the screen, for best results my aim must always be slightly up and left if where I'm aiming....not much, just a bit.
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That's funny. I thought it was just ME. I realigned the screen and picked spots slightly BELOW the X.
Works great now when I actually click ON the icons...

KEYBOARD

I'm really having problems getting use to this keyboard. Does anyone have any suggestions on using it a better way or a different keyboard.
Any help!!!
Marc

swype - slideit
my personal favorites

From my other post:
"I would say that the best typing tweak is to calibrate the screen the way you naturally using it.
So, if your finger touches the screen under some angle while you type, calibrate that. (think of a cross as a letter and touch it under the same angle).
If you type with two hands, calibrate the left side with the left hand and vice-versa.)"
As reported back, this significantly improves typing experience in some cases.

Reduce screen sensitivity

I already have a cab installed that tweaks/ reduces the HD2's screen sensitivity to make typing a bit easier but this is till not good enough.
Typing on the HD2's keyboard is a nightmare as at the slightest touch, it presses unwanted keys as well as neighboring ones, sometimes more than one.
Is there a way to further reduce the screen sensitivity maybe via the registry and/or also to apply a touch input delay?
Thanks very much in advance for the advice!

Yes I am still finding the typing experience a bit of a pain. I hate to say it but it's nowhere near as good as typing on one of those funny Apple touchscreen phones......

adaduk said:
Yes I am still finding the typing experience a bit of a pain. I hate to say it but it's nowhere near as good as typing on one of those funny Apple touchscreen phones......
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Yeap, exactly... the funny Apple touchscreen phones (I have one that I dislike immensely) feature a smaller screen and also smaller/even more crapped-up keyboard, BUT, I type much better there with a fraction of the mistakes i make on the HD2. Why is that? There has got to be a solution... it almost just feels the HD2 is just too fast.. before you want to key in anything, at the slightest touch, you already did!!!!

try out the suggestion from post #3:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5786191#post5786191

CRO_Misho said:
try out the suggestion from post #3:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5786191#post5786191
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Tried that one a while ago, I ran the screen alignment util whilst holding the phone portrait in my left hand whilst touching the screen with the right index finger. Still not as problem free as typing on the smaller apple screen....

ive tested both the bsbtweaks 'decrease screen sensitivity' tweak, and the stand alone sensitivity tweak in the hints and tips thread, and (certainly for use with swype) the bsbtweaks one does a better job.

samsamuel said:
ive tested both the bsbtweaks 'decrease screen sensitivity' tweak, and the stand alone sensitivity tweak in the hints and tips thread, and (certainly for use with swype) the bsbtweaks one does a better job.
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What about the tap time tweak in bsb tweaks? I thought that would apply more to the keyboard it self.

MobileWon said:
What about the tap time tweak in bsb tweaks? I thought that would apply more to the keyboard it self.
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never used it, it messes with teh buttons on teh incall screen. makes them unpressable.

samsamuel said:
never used it, it messes with teh buttons on teh incall screen. makes them unpressable.
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Thanks for the response. I like my screen sensitivity as it is presently. Is there any cabs or tweaks specific to the keyboard only as far as decrease sensitivity?