"People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile."I absolutely agree, typing or editing text on a smartphone is just horrible. There are many times I've started to write an email or post to say HN and I've been so frustrated I've aborted the process and restarted it on my laptop. It's down outright infuriating I have to do this.
[I just hope someone of influence at Google reads these posts and acts accordingly. If people at Google don't understand then it's just another instance—like Microsoft the king of offenders—of where Big Tech won't fix the damn obvious (I wish someone would write a book about it and fully expose the problem).]
1. You mention the keyboard matter. I went to the trouble of buying a small Bluetooth keyboard to use with the phone to help with the problem and it was hopeless, for starters, it had no separate keypad and I couldn't use any of the multiple alternative ways of keying ALT-# etc.—to key in, say, a Unicode character. None of the known 'fixes' actually worked for some reason.
Question (to anyone): we have any amount of hardware available but no decent small Bluetooth keyboards—why on earth not!? There's precious few Bluetooth keyboards anyway let alone decent small ones for portable use or that are convenient to use with smartphones. Manufacturers where the hell are you?
2. The finger problem and selecting text. First, there's the selecting text problem. Either one's fingers are too big or selecting text is difficult because the resolution and or sensitivity of the screen is wrong and it cannot be adjusted. Yes, some phones have a 'glove' mode but it's nigh on useless. Why don't phones have a sensitivity control that makes selecting text with a finger much, much easier?
3. Along the same lines, selecting or editing, say, a URL from a browser address line is painful. When the URL text exceeds the screen width then trying to get to the end of the text is a damn awkward. More often than not either one can't, or the highlight comes on and soon as one tries to get the cursor back the URL disappears altogether. Getting the cursor into the correct position between the text and the GUI element is usually difficult, why doesn't Google allow some blank spaces here so it's easy to edit? Surely, it could be made so that tapping in this vicinity and sliding right would place the cursor at the end of the text without losing it? Editing here really does need fine tuning.
4. UNDO, UBDO! I'm typing this into my browser's HN edit box! If I accidentally refresh the page before posting (which is damn easy to do) then I will have lost everything and have to start over again. Why on earth hasn't the 'undo' problem been solved with browsers, especially so on smartphones? It was solved
over 30 years ago on wordprocessors so why not with browsers?
If I know I'm going to type some long text on my phone then I'll first do so in a text editor and save continually as I go then copy the finished text into the browser. I should NOT have to go to this amount of trouble, it's stupid and ridiculous that phone ergonomics aren't easier. (They say smartphone sales are slowing, well I'd suggest they'd quickly pick up again if Google fixed these important ergonomic issues.)
5. That raises the problem of where are 'undo' plugins for browsers? If browser manufacturers won't do 'undo' then why doesn't someone provide one (if ever a browser plugin was needed for a smartphone then this is it). BTW, there used to be an excellent plugin that did this for desktop Firefox called Lazarus but I haven't seen it for years. Lazarus not only did undos but also kept track of multiple edits—one could go back to any edit point even days or weks later and use or reuse it. Why are we now deprived of such a useful tool nowadays? There's no doubt computers are getting harder to use these days—not easier.
Right, I'm damn annoyed with the primitive smartphone environment I'm forced to use. It may have been OK 10 or more years ago but it's not OK nowadays. It's notable that with every new version of Android that Google adds junk I mostly don't need (and often useful features are removed that I do need and done on the pretext it's for security or such). It really is high time Google started to address these essential usability issues that everyone needs and wants.
This is such an issue one has to question what's going on at Google. Are people at Google incapable of entering more than one line of text into their phones at a single sitting? Can't they comprehend any concept longer than a single Twitter/X entry at a time? Given the neglect, one has to wonder.