In theory, two-thumb typing should be faster, and maybe it actually is, but gesture typing feels smoother and faster.
I understand the theory and I haven't ever timed myself, but I, too, think using gestures seems smoother and faster. I sort of like using gestures and seeing the virtual lines on the keyboard, even though the words sometimes are incorrect!
I hope I can get a demo unit of the new BlackBerry 10 phone. It uses SwiftKey-type predictions, but I don't know if it's from SwiftKey.
You're not alone among Internet Evolutionaries in your love of physical phone keyboards -- I was discusing this with Christine Parizo yesterday and she says that's one reason she loves her BlackBerry.
It's amazing to think that less than six short years ago, when the iPhone came out, a lot of people said its soft keyboard doomed it to fail. Now it's hard to find phones with hard keyboards.
The standard Android Jelly Bean keyboard now supports gesture typing (sorry if I said that here before already). I'm surprised by how much I like it on the 7" Nexus 7.
In theory, two-thumb typing should be faster, and maybe it actually is, but gesture typing feels smoother and faster.
This makes me look forward even more to SwiftKey support for gesture typing. SwiftKey has a reputation for being great at word prediction.
Alas, as you note, physical keyboards on phones are going the way of all flesh. I still think the BlackBerry Bold keyboard is the best phone keyboard on the planet.
It's too bad there aren't many Windows Phone 8 handsets with physical keyboards.
For a tablet -- which has a larger keyboard than a phone -- typing "normally" (well, even with two thumbs), might be as fast or faster than using gestures. However, for phones -- that have smaller keyboards -- gestures might be better. I'm not sure, either.
I find that gestures usually are pretty good. However, words aren't always recognized and that slows down my typing. Frankly, I don't think anything beats the BlackBerry Bold keyboard, and it's too bad there isn't a good selection of physical keyboards for Windows Phone 8 devices.
I'm still not sure if gesture typing is faster than regular thumb typing. Until the 4.2 update, I was using the Thumb Keyboard app on my Nexus 7. Now I use the standard Android keyboard.
I've read about the Swype-like feature in Android 4.2, which is supposed to be at least as good as Swype. I'd love to get my hands on a Nexus 4 to test.
Two handed use of Swype? Hmmm. I've never done that. I still haven't mastered the numerous tricks using one hand. Swype seems to improve my speed significantly on phone touch keyboards, but I think the BlackBerry Bold's physical keyboard still blows away everything, especially because I often don't have to look at the keys.
Also, when typing names, abbreviations, technical terms, etc., I need to use the regular "manual" mode rather than Swype.
Unfortunately, Windows Phone 8 doesn't have Swype or another well reviewed product, SwiftKey. BlackBerry 10 will have a similar product that's supposed to predict the next word.
The recently released Android Jelly Bean 4.2 adds a Swype-like gesture keyboard to the standard Android keyboard.
I'm still getting used to the gesture keyboard. I had thought until now that you had to use it with one finger (or thumb), which seemed like a waste, but now I see where you can use it for two-finger typing. Or, rather, you can use Swype with two fingers and I'm guessing the standard Android works the same way.
Microsoft's integrated Windows environment should help it complete against Apple, especially in the enterprise, assuming Windows Phone 8 works well with Windows 8, and sufficient corporate applications are available.
As for RIM, well, it hasn't yet released the gold version (v1.0) of BlackBerry 10. We won't see it officially unveiled until January 30, and devices won't ship until, I assume, February. So RIM's got a tiny bit more time to smash the bugs.
I wish RIM a lot of luck. I much prefer RIM's physical keyboards for entering lots of text, although touch screens are, obviously, what most users want. Swype isn't bad for Android phone touch keyboards, and RIM's all-touch phone has a Swype-like keyboard.
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