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Written by Bjorn Stromberg
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Thursday, 28 June 2007 |
Loren watched a video demonstration of the iPhone's keyboard and saw it as a serious challenge to the handwriting recognition on her tablet. So she stepped up to the challenge and wrote on her tablet along with the video to see if she could keep up. Turns out she's almost as fast as the iPhone, but it really makes you think about input for touchscreens.
When the UMPCs first launched a big attraction was the onscreen keyboard called DialKeys. A lot of people saw this keyboard and thought it would be a great way to enter text. Unfortunately, DialKeys never really took off and a lot of users said they'd prefer to use smaller thumb-boards. Now, we see newer devices like the OQO model 02 and the VIA NanoBook that offer thumb-boards or even full-size keyboards.
Personally, I am a big fan of touchscreens and looking at the iPhone I can't help but be a bit envious of that keyboard. On the other hand, the TIP in Vista is vastly improved over XP and I think if you've got a Vista UMPC or Tablet you should be able to easily match the speed and accuracy of your friends on their iPhone. Just as long as you don't try to use DialKeys to do it.
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Visitor
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Comparison between the Iphone Keyboard and DialKeys is quiet hard.
On one side you have the Iphone keyboard that uses a very traditional layout that many devices is that form factor uses: BlackBerry, Black Jack... The users are used to it and as result it's easy to pick up.
DialKeys on the other side with its thumb board skins is mean for much larger and heavier devices. The split keyboard style ask to get used to it as the user now need two distinctive places to watch out, but it’s unbeatable in ergonomics for device with screens larger than 6 inch when you want to use them while standing or shaky environments: hard grasp on the device, large keys without increasing the none screen surface of the device (think Q1 Ultra), low stress on the wrists (think more slide out keyboards like the medion umpc). You have also some credit to give to DialKeys that is compatible with most legacy third party software; The Iphone in comparison is full custom software build from scratch.
But now it looks like DialKeys is trying getting the new edge with a new version. I downloaded it at www.dialkeys.com and it looks like they got some pretty good innovative ideas.