gadgetphix

Even though I have stated before that I don’t like comparing the iPhone to BlackBerry devices, because to me, they are completely different devices for completely different people, I, along with many readers felt compelled to find out which of these devices really offered the more efficient keyboard. And when I say efficient, I mean typing a message with the least amount of effort, and in this case, effort means “time.” Now, going along with the “different” theme, these two devices offer completely different keyboards, both of which, are best in class if you ask me. But if you were to choose one of these devices over the other for the keyboard alone, which would it be? Read on to find out…

For the test I wanted to use a sentence or paragraph length that I thought would be a good representation of a typical email sent from a portable device. As I looked through the last 20 or so sent messages on my device, I saw that the average email consisted of two or three sentences containing roughly 45 -50 words. I wanted to keep this test “real world” so I wanted to throw in an all capital word, and a quote or something, so with all that in mind this is what I came up with for the test:

This is a test to see if I can type faster on a BlackBerry or an iPhone. Both of these devices offer “best in class” keyboards, but the BlackBerry features a physical QWERTY keyboard and the iPhone features a virtual keyboard on a touch sensitive screen.

During the first test, I simply typed the two sentences on both devices just as I would normally have typed them. Results: iPhone 52 sec. – 0 typos / BlackBerry 52 sec. – 0 typos. I was a little shocked that I could type just as fast on my iPhone as I could on my BlackBerry. “Must be a fluke,” I thought, “Can’t wait to get to test two.”

During the second test, I wanted to go flat out as fast as I could type. I wouldn’t pay any attention to spelling errors or typos, I just wanted to see how fast I could pound out those two sentences – that simple. Results: iPhone 43 sec. – 4 typo/ BlackBerry 48 sec. – 3 typos.  So it appears that in an all out sprint to the finish that maybe I am a little faster on the iPhone. I finished five seconds faster but with one more mistake. During this test, I exposed a flaw in the iPhone’s brilliant auto-correct feature, it doesn’t detect space bar errors very well. Three of the typos I made during the test were caused by either missing the space bar and causing two words to run together or by accidentally pressing the space bar thereby causing a space to be placed in the middle of a word. I also must admit that two of the errors I made on the BlackBerry were when I borked “iPhone”, spelling it oPhon, and the BlackBerry failed to correct both of those instances. I guess I can’t blame RIM for not including iPhone in the BlackBerry dictionary. I am disappointed though that, the BlackBerry failed to correct “oferr”, which should have been “offer.” The iPhone seemed to take an early lead, although ever so slight. On to test three…

For test three, I wanted to type the two sentences naturally, not as if I were doing a test to see which device I could type faster on, but more like if I were at a red light trying to finish the sentence just before the light turns green – we’ve all be there! So, the results: iPhone 44 sec. – 3 typos / BlackBerry 48 sec. – 1 typo. Once again, I completed the sentences faster using the iPhone, and not just slightly faster, we’re talking five seconds faster – that could be the difference between getting yanked out of a car and beaten over the head with my phone (at the red light) or looking up just in time to see the light turn green! So the iPhone could have potentially saved my life! Ok, just kidding, but five seconds is noticeably faster. Once again though, I did make a couple of more mistakes on the iPhone. At this point in the testing I am amost dismayed at the results. I have for months, been talking about how much better a physical keyboard like the one found BlackBerry devices is far better than any virtual keyboard, but so far the test results are telling me that I’ve been passing incorrect information.

I wanted to try the test from another slightly different angle so this time I wanted to type as fast as I could, but at the same time I also wanted to make a conscious effort not to make mistakes. So I gave it about 70% focus on speed and 30% focus on accuracy. And here are the results: iPhone 48 sec. – 3 typos / BlackBerry 48 sec. – 3 typos. I promise you folks that this was not a setup.

So far I’ve managed to finish the sentences slightly faster on the iPhone but with a few more mistakes so if you take the mistakes into consideration, correcting mistakes takes time, I’d say they are pretty even. I could hardly believe that the test results had led me to such indecisive results. After all, I really wanted to know once and for all which keyboard really was the better keyboard and I fully expected one device to emerge a clear winner here but as it turns out, and contrary to my pre-test beliefs, I am almost equally efficient at typing on both keyboards. At times I seemed to be slightly faster on the BlackBerry and at times I seemed to be slightly faster on the iPhone and while some of you may interpret these results as giving the BlackBerry Bold a slight edge over the iPhone and vice versa, you have to account for factors such as human error, or the simple fact that I may just be better than most on one particular sytle of keyboard. Taking those things into consideration, I don’t think that you can say that one keyboard is better than the other.

So while I don’t think we can say that one keyboard completely blows the other away, this test did have one profound effect on me, and that is that I am now a believer in virtual keyboards. I had always written off the iPhone’s keyboard and just assumed that a virtual keyboard was never going to be a good as a physical keyboard. Was is just my reluctance to accept new technology? And I’m not saying that Apple invented the virtual keyboard, but for all intensive purposes, they did, if you disagree, sorry my article has lulled you to sleep. Was is just part of my preconceived notion that all humans seem to posses when it comes to new technology? I don’t know what or who caused me to believe that a device with a virtual keyboard stood no chance against a device with a physcial keyboard, but I did the test and the results are in, and virtual keyboards are now a force to be reckoned with.

Before I end this post I do want to mention a couple of tidbits that I picked up along the way and one of them being that I did notice when switching back and forth between phones during the tests was that it did take considerably less effort to type on the iPhone. At times, I seemed to actually be much faster on the iPhone but then I’d make a mistake and it would take me a second or two to get back on track and that’s what kept the results close throughout the tests. But software can be tweaked and improved upon and the iPhone keyboard can get better with a firmware update whereas the BlackBerry keyboard cannot be changed, it is what it is, and this is where I think virtual keyboards have a distinct advantage. I see a day when the user will be able to customize the size of the keys on screen to better suit his/her typing style and/or finger size, the possibilities are endless. I don’t think we are going to see the end of physical keyboards for quite some time – it did take the DVD format nearly six years to outpace VHS in rentals. I definitely give virtual keyboards like the one found on the iPhone much more credit now, that’s for sure.

The final point I wanted to make is that not all virtual keyboards are created equal, and perhaps some have had a bad experience with a poorly designed virtual keyboard on another phone and just assumed that the experience was going to be the same regardless of the type of device they were using. I’ve used other smartphones (I won’t mention specific models) with virtual keyboards and the experience was absolutely horrendous and wasn’t even close to the what you can expect on a well designed virtual keyboard like the one found on the iPhone. Maybe many of you have never really given virtual keyboards much thought either, but maybe you should, you might be surprised. Verdict: tie, for now.

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