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Don't get me wrong, i love my phone and i think that it is a seriously cool piece of technology, but we are just not getting along at the moment when it comes to texting.
I've come from a n95, where i could quite happily bash out text messages all day with very few errors, however, on my HD i can hardly type a word correctly either using the full qwerty or phone keypad. I've tried to persevere with both, but things seem to be getting worse rather than better. I'm fine when using the stylus, but when using fingers I am all over the place.
The thing that annoys me most is when i press a key and the key increases in size (as it should) but then nothing appears in the message. The space bar is the worst culprit for this, i'll be typing away and the space bar will acknowledge the press, but when i check the message something like teoitoerteritktret will be there as the space bar presses haven't been put between the words.
So please help me and my HD to remain friends and if you can suggest alternative keyboards that can be downloaded or any tips that you have I'd be more than grateful to hear about them
Spud
For myself, texting has been great on the HD and I have pretty big fingers (i'm 6"4'...and sorry for the 'standard' units). What might help is using the keyboard in landscape if you're not already doing that, that way the keys are alot bigger, especialy in qwerty mode. Also, T9 might be helpful since it corrects mistakes (like hitting the wrong key for one of the letters). As for hitting the key but not having it input it into the text, that occurs when you touch the screen where the key is (good) but before picking up the finger moving it of that key (bad). This tends to occur when you 'roll' your finger onto/off a key. Another thing which might help is this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=479464&highlight=finger+keyboard (there might be a v2 out already...or still in testing not sure) which is suppose to be a more finger friendly keyboard. A last option which I can give you from the top of my head is Dutty's v1.8 ROM which i believe uses a different keyboard which looks a bit more finger friendly as well.
Hope atleast some of this helps and good luck
I had a bit of difficulty typing at the beginning with the HD, I tried all the keyboards. Even in landscape (full QWERTY) although better than portrayed I found the Compact Keyboard to be the most effective way of typing. I was going to choose the default phone keypad where you have 3 letters but with compact QWERTY you have 2 keys on each key which is even better/faster/accurate (T9-wise). I typed for 2 weeks and now rarely make mistakes, sometimes I even type taking my eyes of the screen because I have memorised the distance between the keys.
I hated the keyboards and nearly wanted to throw the HD in the bin.
This is what I recommend for fast accurate texting.
Use PHONEPAD keyboard. Large keys so you can't accidentally hit the wrong key.
Turn on T9 input (not ABC)
In T9 settings, from Settings, Input, Options menu, uncheck Auto-Substitution and Word Completion in ABC mode. The other two leave checked.
In Word Completion tab, uncheck Suggest words when entering text and check box for Enable auto correct.
I found my frustration came from the words i was typing were automatically changed and substitued when i didn't want them to.
good luck!
Do you know if Cootek TouchPal works on HTC Touch HD ?
I use it on both my HTC Prophet and Diamond and I really like it.
IMHO, it's much better than the provided full and compact qwerty keyboards.
The only drawback is that it's not free software.
Just my two cents.
Cheers.
David
Thanks for the input guys, i've gone for the finger keyboard option to start with and intial impressions are that it is much better, not perfect though, but certainly better
Try getting a smaller keyboard and you will have a great time typing with the stylus.
i can type pretty fast on the phone pad method on my touch HD with t9 activated. the interface is good, much better than the one they included on the universal.
i cant type as fast as i did on my touch dual, but almost as fast now since i've had practise.
i never got the point of full qwerty onscreen, i cant stand them lol, i always use phonepad method. plus with this you can text using one hand
movig from a physical keyboard to a touchscreen is indeed a big change of habits. rather than suggesting a input method I would suggest you some behaviors that helped me a lot in the beginning:
-do not try to type when walking as it makes aiming the keys more difficult
-try to look at the actual keys not at the word written, look at the word every now and then to check for errors
-take your time, it needs concentration on the beginning a.k.a do not try to type too fast just to realize you can do it, speed comes with practice
-try all the input methods with all possible combinations to see what fits you most
-not really the thread to discuss about this, but there are some tweaks and programs available to your device that help a lot, mainly like:
touchresponse by snailslug which provides a small vibration every time you hit the screen, this helps on understanding whether you actually pressed the key
hd tweak and advanced configuration tools can increase the sensitivity of your touchscreen so that less pressure is needed to interact with it
these small tips and a lot of patience helped me a lot in the beginning, now (just after a couple months) I happily type with full qwerty on portrait only both with 2 and 1 hand (and i'm 1m90 tall so don't have exactly small fingers ... and I feel there is a lot more room for improvement
I have just upgraded to the Touch HD. My previous two phones were the TyTn and the TyTn 2 with hardware keyboards, and as you can imagine how well I'd get on with the touch screen for typing was my biggest concern.
I've played around a bit and found the transition much easier than expected, I find that using the QWERTY keyboard with the T9 dictionary turned on works best for me.
As someone else has mentioned, don't try and touch type, that will only lead to mistakes, look at the buttons as you press them and then check your text every so often to make sure it's how you think it should be.
Try Cootek's Touchpal keyboard, best I've tried so far for HD.
There are some others that you may get on with, like Resco and CM.
try fingerkeyboard, it works better for me than the stock HTC keyboard
I've always used FSK (FULL SIZE KEYBOARD) by Spb. I've used it back when I was using an Eten and 5 HTC products later, I've got it on my HD.
Because the screen is larger, it has the tiniest amount of distortion on HD but nothing that makes a big difference.
Like someone mentioned, I've gotten use to using a stylus so many times it's just as fast for me to use the little keyboard.
But then again, I've never been one of those 500 texts a minute person anyway.
HTH's,
Mark
jst first day of my HD usage...i used to have a nokia E61i (still got it) and coupled with nimbuzz i was easily using my mobile to chat to friends and family for abt 3 hours non stop easily like np... but...jst 15 mins of typing on HD and like omg i could only see one line of the conversation box ( landscape mode) and den the keyboard was lil small on te potrait mode. btw...used finger keyboard ver 2 to type...n in jst some minutes my wrist was hurting from keeping the mobile up ( e61i waws heavy as well but was no problemo to me :|) so u people got any sugessions i could try ? Else i'll have to switch to Xperia X1 cuz i would have had no choice left ....help me out plz guys...
I was using my nephew's iPod Touch the other day and the keyboard had a feature I quite liked. When you pressed a key it popped up, but above your finger, so you could actually see what key had been pressed. Are there any apps that copy this?
Plonker said:
I was using my nephew's iPod Touch the other day and the keyboard had a feature I quite liked. When you pressed a key it popped up, but above your finger, so you could actually see what key had been pressed. Are there any apps that copy this?
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the new HTC keyboard from the new manilla has this that feature now. I think you can get the new keyboard from the app section or the development part.
I was very used to physical keypad on Nokia phone. When I switched over to D810/Trinity, I was using Phonepad, then when TouchPal was launched, I started using it. Since then, TouchPal has been my keyboard. I am using the compact qwerty instead of Phonepad layout. TouchPal has pretty good predictive engine. If you type mostly English or those language supported by TouchPal, then it will be great. Else predictive engine may not be that helpful.
Anyway, what's helpful about TouchPal is also the swipe feature. e.g. swiping the word backward give you the past tense, upward gives you the plural, forward gives you the continuous tense, downward give you the other choices related to the word.
On the key it self, swiping left or right allow you to select the specific letter in the key : 2 letters per key, plus a number (bottom) and a symbol (top). Swiping upward gives you the capital letter, downward gives you the symbol and up and then downward give you the number. Cool, right?!
It comes with copy and paste as well as other useful symbol, preset words features.
For those who really really hate typing, check out ShapeWriter. You 'glide' from one key to another without lifting your finger. Just that the keyboard layout is not too big. The key is pretty small. I'm waiting for 'Swype' which has the same technology, but with bigger key. Sadly, it's not out yet.
Just want to know:
can anyone of u use his elf just with the finger? like the iphone?
i always have to do everything with my fingernail.
Yeah, paying attention to how I use it, you're right I always use my nail to get to the smaller objects, even the Start Menu, and keyboard. The only place I use my whole thumb is when scrolling the TF2D menu.
mhh yeah. but i mean if you are able to use your finger :> because it seems like the touch has some kind of problem with the complete finger. i have to push the screen very hard until it recognizes that im touching
@freaksey ... have a look here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=360564&highlight=touch+pressure+threshold
for info on changing what pressure you need to register a touch. i found that helped.
re tiny buttons ... the two main things i did to make mine more finger friendly (i hate having to use stylus on something called Touch) are
- install RandomAccess.exe ... the Contacts app from Touch Dual ... much better than the (awful) one that came on early Elfs (if yours is recent, it may have this anyway)
- install better keyboards. there's lots about, user preference dictates which is best. i've currently got Gullum's Diamond keyboard which is nice.
yeah yeah i know :> i have this already on 80866... i just want to know if this problem with "whole thumb pressing" exsits only for me. the sensebility is already awesome, the only prob is that everything just works when i touch the screen with my nail and not when i do this with my thumb.
That would probably because your nail is recognized by the screen at the distinct location it is hitting it and the phone knows what you want to click on, but your fat fingers may hit a few different 'touch' areas and the phone is unsure which of those was to be accessed so it ignores the entry.... my only presumption.
You guys are right. I never noticed before that using the pad of my thumb or even finger does not work very well. I also out of habbit use my finger nail. I implemented the sensitivity tweaks about 6 months ago and noticed a dramatic improvement with the amount of pressure I had to implement to use my device but it still works best using finger nail rather than the pads of your fingers or thumbs. I have to make several attempts using much more pressure to use the pads of my fingers or thumbs. It's too bad really but not that big of a hassle now since I am use to using my finger and thumb nails and with the sensitivity tweaks it works really well.
I've got the onxy rom at the moment but before i just downloaded a different keyboard and can use it fine with my fingers.
Im using the Touch Of HD Rom and I have no problem getting around my device every day without getting the stylus!
Somtimes i forget the stylus is even there
100th Post ^_^
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.
Click to expand...
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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Click to collapse
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...
hi all that's the best typing tweaks to improve the keyboards response while making less mistakes and it thinking I've typed something i haven't lol.
DAMIEN123_666 said:
hi all that's the best typing tweaks to improve the keyboards response while making less mistakes and it thinking I've typed something i haven't lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It took me a couple of weeks, but I ended up using practice.
Typing tweaks
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.)
CRO_Misho said:
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.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me, disabling keyboard vibration made it much more accurate than by default (and I really hate the keyboard vibrating too)
Grtz,
Degake
hi all i found a tweak called TOUCH SCREEN 3,3 TEST... its works good sofar thank you
CRO_Misho said:
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.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As suggested i have calibrated my HD2 screen, and now i feel much more comfortable than ever before. Thanks for the advice.
i did a few things.. used b2b tweak to decrease the sensitivity.. as my touch keys were all over the place.. disabled touch vibration on everything! including on sms keyboard. now can type with both thumbs at quite fast speed little errors
the best "tweak" (by far) to get the best typing experience on an HD2 is to install swype.
Audio Oblivion said:
the best "tweak" (by far) to get the best typing experience on an HD2 is to install swype.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Swype is great. If you are lucky enough that it supports your language...
Audio Oblivion said:
the best "tweak" (by far) to get the best typing experience on an HD2 is to install swype.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree Swype has made me an incredible typist
CRO_Misho said:
Swype is great. If you are lucky enough that it supports your language...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where can I get swype from? the website doesn't have a download link.
CRO_Misho said:
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.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is it possible to calibrate the hd2 to more than 1 finger?
What is the biggest keyboard which can be installed on the HTC HD2? I have tried swype and the standard keyboard that comes with the phone, but I tend to be hitting the key next door at times resulting in me taking longer than I would like to send a simple text.
I haven't seen an Iphone keyboard before but I have not heard anyone mentioning the difficulties with the typing on that phone, I could be wrong of course.
I need some decent size keys to press, it wouldn't of been to bad if we had a stylus in the phone.
Trust me, the Iphone keyboard is harder to use.
I always miss the buttons on the standard keyboard, but is it really a problem?
XT9 corrects me 98% of the time.
And with swype its not a problem at all...
You are swyping the keyboard, right? Because its almost impossible to press the buttons.
Maybe my damn fingers are just too big, with swype I find myself rolling my finger to see if I'm swiping the right key or the one beside it. Oh well let's see how it goes.
Cheers
Then you could consider the possibility to move the keyboard on the horizontal way, using software as girator, then if you use both the thumbs with an angle of 90 degrees it is really easy to write, look in youtube a video that shows how a iphone user can write faster than one that use the great swype on hd2, it is just a matter of pratical skill that stems for some training. anyway there are software that use bigger keyboard, if I well remember is the spb keyboard.
3 solutions...
1)swype
2)training
3)spb keyboard
seems easy...
Yeap practice is definately the way forward in this case I think
sony007 said:
What is the biggest keyboard which can be installed on the HTC HD2? I have tried swype and the standard keyboard that comes with the phone, but I tend to be hitting the key next door at times resulting in me taking longer than I would like to send a simple text.
I haven't seen an Iphone keyboard before but I have not heard anyone mentioning the difficulties with the typing on that phone, I could be wrong of course.
I need some decent size keys to press, it wouldn't of been to bad if we had a stylus in the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the iphone is much more accurate then hd2.i own the hd2 and the htc shift.
Accuracy depends on each and every person. You can`t say that one keyboard is more accurate than another, because only the person typing can be more or less accurate when using one of the keyboards. I`ve used both the iPhone and the HD2 (which I own) and I would go for the HD2`s keyboard anytime. But that`s just my opinion.
As for the OP`s problem, use SPB Keyboard if you have a hard time typing on the stock keyboard.