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Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

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Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#321

Post by nojs »

jiehong wrote: post #222
nasretdinov wrote: post #194

I'm kinda surprised that no-one has mentioned that languages other than English exist. Virtual keyboards, while a bit clunky, allow to easily switch input languages, and most of the world for whom English isn't their native language use this feature very very often. Physical keyboards for laptops solve this issue by having different keyboard layouts for different languages (and are usually geared towards that languag…

Exactly. At the extreme end, there are older Chinese users who often hand write Chinese on the screen to write a sentence, one character at a time. In the middle there are many things, like Latin but unusual layout such as French bepo, or Chinese input methods based on shapes, or Japanese kana, or the old T9 that I still see some people using (probably to have bigger letter targets). A touch screen really ease custom…

For Chinese, most people in Taiwan use zhuyin which would be difficult on this keyboard without any labels.

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#323

Post by zoom6628 »

SushiHippie wrote: post #69

This made me realise how much I'd love a physical keyboard on my phone. But not like this, this is too long and I don't think one will have a pleasant typing experience with this. I thought about this one for a few minutes, but I can't think of a good way to integrate a keyboard in a smartphone case, that will give you the experience of a blackberry or similar. The slide-out ones that you could use in horizontal orie…

You are describing the BlackBerry passport. Other replies have some great ideas about magnetic keyboard. I was thinking why not Samsung Flip that splits the screen surface and uses rotating hinge so one side of the slab is screen or rotate for keyboard. That would be my ideal mobile. Success would come down to the strength and reliability of the hinge but this should be doable at a small increment in price.

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#324

Post by miek »

guyinblackshirt wrote: post #312
cududa wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Palm Pre was my dream phone

that and the Sharp Zaurus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus#/media/File:Zauru...

Ah my beloved Zaurus 5500 with the camera card. I still have many grainy photos I took with it. The slide out keyboard was fantastic, and like all devices, it too ran Doom.

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#325

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

afandian wrote: post #180
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #118

Curious - do folks not use swiftkey-like onscreen keyboards? I feel like I'm legions faster using this style on a phone vs tapping. I get preferring a physical keyboard if you're tapping, but I can't imagine going back once I got used to swiping.

There’s a bit of a trope that people who want hardware keyboards in the era of touchscreens are idiots. I’m one of them. There’s a huge number, and therefore diversity of mobile users. Some of us have different preferences to the mainstream. I feel crippled typing on my iPhone. It takes ages to type and correct messages. I often can’t get my pass code right first time. And I remember that typing was never an issue on…

> There’s a bit of a trope that people who want hardware keyboards in the era of touchscreens are idiots.

To be clear, I wasn't implying that in the slightest. I was just curious if folks who say they prefer physical keyboards have tried swipe typing. I didn't really like "tap on glass" typing either, but once I got used to swipe typing it was a "I'll never go back" moment for me.

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#326

Post by rtpg »

jrmg wrote: post #238
thom wrote: post #204

It’s incredibly rare that I can type even a single sentence correctly on the iPhone. In that one it came out ‘in’ and not ‘on’ for example. In that one I typed sample not example. I got that last one right! I see the arguments from both sides but it’s a real shame the design space of smartphones has become so conservative. Such intensely personal devices deserve to be more varied. If I thought I could build some sort…

You may know this and not like it, or find it doesn’t work for you, but on the off chance you don’t: just keep going. Autocorrect will often step in and correct things one or two words later when it works out that letters near where you tapped make a more plausible sentence than the ones you actually tapped.

I think iOS changed its behavior like this in the past year or two and it's so frustrating after years of per-word autocorrect. Like having the text flow around randomly while typing out your sentence, seeing the text be _entirely wrong_, and just having to pray that the text will end up right at the end of the action.

I don't know what is better here but honestly per-word predictions were way better for my usecases.

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#327

Post by girvo »

I love this so much, but it’s a missed opportunity IMO:

I want one for my 13 Mini, and (secondarily, even for normal sized iPhones) it should use the M600i/P1i keyboard

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/images/reviews/m600/m600-fron...

QW is one key, you rock left for Q and right for W, or rather you tap on each side! It works amazingly well, especially with modern autocorrect id imagine, and makes it easier to hit the key.

Or you could the TouchPal approach and just do QW as one key entirely and use autocorrect for the rest of it

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#328

Post by adamomada »

yungporko wrote: post #112
huytersd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe you. There’s no way you type faster with up to three taps needed per letter. What a disgusting monstrosity those things were.

i'd say predictive text/t9 was way faster than any other phone input method ever for texting. nothing else comes close imo, not even blackberry keyboards (unless you need more fine control over capitalisation and punctuation and stuff e.g work emails)

I've used them all and THE fastest and most accurate entry on mobile by far was the psuedo-t9 keyboard on the Blackberry 7130. It was so good that it was frustrating to use the full keyboard on later Blackberry models.

I wonder how many people actually experienced this keyboard in the world, perhaps only in the thousands?*

Seems they had a name for it, SureType:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BlackBerry_products#Fi...

edit: ah I see it was used on other more popular models, too. Blackberry Pearl users should chime in!

Re: Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone

#329

Post by paxys »

I doubt this thing will get anywhere, but this discussion thread is making me nostalgic about the wild times of smartphone design in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Motorola Droid. HTC Touch. Palm Pre. Nokia N900/N95/N97 and their other crazy form factors. All the different Blackberrys.

Phones were sliding, folding, twisting. Then at some point everyone decided that a glass rectangle was the only way to go and that was it.

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