I prefer QWERTY to touchscreen, what about you?

I waited nearly a month after acquiring a touchscreen phone, to make this post, but now I'm ready to say that for me, a QWERTY is a must and a pure touch phone does not cut it.

I use the Samsung Wave, and some people have told me, iPhone has a better touch screen, a larger display makes a difference, SWYPE on Android is superb etc.

But I find the touchscreen to be responsive and easy to use, so that is not the issue. In fact, I find it way more convenient for some activities like quickly accessing widgets from the homescreen, browsing the net etc. The touchscreen in these cases acts like a mouse, taking me to the portion of the screen that I want to focus my attention on.

The touchscreen irks me when I want to type. When it's an SMS or a mail, I find myself making way more mistakes than I make with a keypad. And it gets worse when I am entering passwords. Maybe I get more butter-fingered because I am concentrating, but what is a simple process with a keyboard, becomes an ordeal on a touch phone. And any typing is rendered more difficult when in a moving vehicle.

The larger sized keyboard, on a landscape orientation solves the problem but only partially. In fact by default, I only use this keyboard as the portrait QWERTY is way too small.

I also miss the tactile feedback of keys. No amount of virtual feedback, either a clicking sound or a vibration, can really compensate for that.

I had blogged earlier about QWERTY phones. Looks like they will be back on my shopping list.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 18, 2010 at 1:26 AM

    I agree. The miniature qwerty keyboard is no different for me especially with passwords. My typing mistake rate is 1 in 10; texts at least can be seen and corrected but password is a pain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NishaNovember 18, 2010 at 7:24 AM

    I have learned to manage with the QWERTY keyboard even if its small. Believe me, the touchscreen is tougher! Thanks for reading and commenting!

    ReplyDelete

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