Palm: Pre, webOS & app discussion

[beesonthewhatnow]

Here's the iPhone Speed Typing Test test:


I beat him by miles on my Centro!

I beat him by about 3 seconds on my G1

 

[editor]

This is a good example of me on a small keyboard. By the time he has typed www i've entered the whole thing.

It's a 'she' and she is typing spectacularly slow.

 

[Crispy]

Obviously, this calls for a type-off, mana á mano.

 

[editor]

Obviously, this calls for a type-off, mana á mano.

Has there ever been any studies that concluded that virtual keyboards were faster than hardware ones?

Individuals will have their preferences of course, but I've always thought that a well designed hardware keyboard will always beat hitting a flat piece of lifeless glass.

 

[Crispy]

Thoughts count for nothing! Only action! Typist vs typist in a ring of combat.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Thoughts count for nothing! Only action! Typist vs typist in a ring of combat.

I'll have an IBM "M" type as my weapon of choice

Keyboard design reached perfection in 1984 as far as I'm concerned...

 

[editor]

Thoughts count for nothing! Only action! Typist vs typist in a ring of combat.

So far the G1 and Centro has beaten the iPhone guy. Let's see what your phone is made of. Get typing son!

 

[paolo]

I beat him by about 3 seconds on my G1

Heh heh!

Exact same for me on glass.

I'd have been sooooo slow on hardkey, but I think this is probably showing that the biggest factor might be what you are used to, not the keyboard type.

 

[Crispy]

So far the G1 and Centro has beaten the iPhone guy. Let's see what your phone is made of. Get typing son!

when I get home. no flash on my work machine

 

[paolo]

when I get home. no flash on my work machine

"iPhone FC making a substitution. Off goes paulo999, on is Crispy."

*High-Fives Crispy*

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Oi! Enough with the bloody thread derail mofos!

 

[paolo]

Oi! Enough with the bloody thread derail mofos!

It's fun derail though. And sort of relevant. Ish.

 

[editor]

"iPhone FC making a substitution. Off goes paulo999, on is Crispy."

*High-Fives Crispy*

Crispy hasn't got an iPhone.

 

[paolo]

Crispy hasn't got an iPhone.

He's got an iPod Touch. Same thing, for a typing test.

(Crispy, you've not bottled it have you? C'mon! )

 

[editor]

I'd have been sooooo slow on hardkey, but I think this is probably showing that the biggest factor might be what you are used to, not the keyboard type.

With a good hardware keyboard, you can feel the adjacent keys without looking down and that's going to give you an advantage over dead glass with zero tactile or haptic feedback.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

It's fun derail though. And sort of relevant. Ish.

Bitchasses.

 

[Crispy]

He's got an iPod Touch. Same thing, for a typing test.

(Crispy, you've not bottled it have you? C'mon! )

about 20 secs. bear in mind I don't do a massive amount of typing. the autocorrect fixed my typing of the word 'three' and the word 'couple'

 

[paolo]

Yeah I benefitted from a couple of auto-corrects. Roughly a draw. Ish.

Anyway, sorry KE... As you were.

 

[editor]

about 20 secs. bear in mind I don't do a massive amount of typing. the autocorrect fixed my typing of the word 'three' and the word 'couple'

For a proper comparison between the keyboards ability, auto-correcting should be disallowed - or trickier words used!

 

[Crispy]

That's like saying predictive text is cheating!

 

[editor]

That's like saying predictive text is cheating!

Not at all - but if you were relying on auto-correct, you would have been bollocksed for time if the sample text included several tricky words that would easily confuse your software.

 

[editor]

This is a pretty good feature:

Text Words Per Minute

The capabilities of the iPhone's on screen keyboard has been one of the most widely discussed features since the phone was announced in January. There have been many who feared that it would be slow and difficult to use, especially those who are used to hardware keyboards as found on BlackBerries and Treos.

To test the performance of the iPhone's on screen keyboard we used two hands (two thumbs to be specific) to enter a sample sentence and timed how long it took after having familiarized ourselves with the interface.

We repeated this test five times and took the average for our score. The iPhone took an average of 24.26 seconds to enter our sample sentence, which works out to 39.6 words per minute (WPM). This is a solid but not spectacular score for a phone with a QWERTY keyboard.

You can see from the chart below that the iPhone performed as well as the BlackBerry 8800 and only slightly worse than the Palm Treo 750.

It also did significantly better than the Nokia N95's hardware keypad and the LG Prada's virtual keypad.

It should be noted that the keyboard definitely takes some time to learn. Even after spending twenty minutes doing nothing but learning to type our test sentence we were only able to get accurate results when typing about 50% of the time. We're sure this will improve with use, and as Apple has stated you do need to "trust" the auto correction as its excellent.

Frankly we misspelled just about every word we typed, but the software accurately predicted what we wanted most of the time. Our errors were usually due to hitting one of the control keys, rather than hitting the wrong letter on the keyboard. Given that this approach is a departure from the hardware QWERTY keyboards that have become the standard on smart phones we were very pleased with the results.

Handset - Words Per Minute
Apple iPhone 39.6
Blackberry 8800 39.30
Helio Ocean 53.00
LG Prada 33.80
Nokia N95 29.28
Palm Treo 750 43.8

Win for QWERTY keypads!

The rest of the feature is quite good too, and shows how the iPhone trounces the opposition in many areas of usability.

Shame they didn't include a Palm OS phone in there - there was a similar test in a UK mag a while ago and they were right up there when it came to speed and ease of use.

http://www.wirelessinfo.com/content/Apple-iPhone-Cell-Phone-Review/Hardware.htm

 

[Sunray]

I did make a point of saying Apples virtual keyboard due to its often amazing ability to convert even the most unlikely mistakes into what I intended typing. Without that I would have to go a lot slower.

 

[paolo]

There's simply no way on *earth* a 12 key numeric (N series) is anything like as quick as that, in relative terms. I've posted here for six months on 'cap qwerty', but barely posted anything from my 12 key 6300.

I reckon though that, all things considered now, hardkey qwerty has the edge. But closer than might be imagined.

What I'd really like in a hard key design is a massively light touch. So, fingers at close range, as they are with a handheld, one can tap. Like a real keyboard. Not press.

If nothing else, it's more fluid.

 

[editor]

I reckon though that, all things considered now, hardkey qwerty has the edge. But closer than might be imagined.

The Palm Pre keyboard comes with auto-correct for a double win, btw.

Interesting article:
10 things the Palm Pre does better than the iPhone
http://www.t3.com/feature/10-things-the-palm-pre-does-better-than-the-iphone

 

[paolo]

Is one of them "Be available to buy" ?

 

[editor]

Is one of them "Be available to buy" ?

When the time comes, I expect nothing less than cheerleading Palm staff orchestrating a countdown outside the store and delivering high fives and whoops after I've spent four days outside the store.

 

[editor]

The Palm Pre will be able to surf the web while taking calls, and MySpace has announced a custom application for the handset.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341178,00.asp

 

[editor]

Interesting HTML5 techie stuff. The Google guy is loving the Pre!

Looks like offline Gmail on the iPhone wasn't the only trick Google's Vic Gondotra has up his sleeve during his talk at MWC -- he also gave a quick demo of Google Maps running as a web app on the Palm Pre. Of course, what's interesting there is that the Pre's HTML-based SDK means that web apps can act like first class citizens on the device -- which is probably why Vic called the Pre "arguably one of my favorite devices." Hopefully that means we're going to see a lot more Pre devs really blur the line between local and cloud-based applications, but for now we'll just settle for the short demo video after the break.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/google-demos-html5-based-maps-on-the-palm-pre/

 

[editor]

Here's the soft touch back you need for the Touchstone accessory to work (I prefer that to the glossy one anyway):]

Elsewhere, Palm have confirmed that games are in development for webOS.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/19/palm-confirms-games-are-in-development-for-pre-drops-a-few-othe/