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Comment by mcantor | Hacker News Reader

Still holding out for a similar phone with a hardware keyboard. BTW, I've heard tell that the Droid has a hardware keyboard, but you can't feel the difference between keys, making it less usable than the G1's keyboard. Can anyone corroborate that?

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I have a Nexus One and I have to say I've quickly become ALMOST as good at typing as I was on the iPhone. Sometimes the lack of multi-touch (pressing one key while you're letting up on another) bites you in the ass but it's pretty rare.

My primary issue with the keyboard is that it's very close to the four un-beveled buttons below the screen. I'll quite often hit "back" when I mean to hit "?123" which is pretty annoying.

I've also had good success with the new voice recognition feature for short emails and text messages.

Overall the keyboard is much less polished than the iPhone but I was pleasantly surprised at how usable it was.

Why's the pressing one key while you're letting up another a problem? Presumably it's either registering on press or release, but not both? Or is there more complicated fancy business going on?

If you type fast enough you'll often be pressing the second key with your other thumb before the first thumb has quite left the keyboard. The iPhone allows for this but the N1 doesn't (or doesn't appear to in limited testing).

The android keyboard is in fact multi-touch.

Not in my experience. Hold down one key, then hit another, the second key doesn't register (like it does on the iPhone).

I've had my Droid a little over a month now. While I'd definitely say the keys are less tactile than my last QWERTY phone (Treo 650), I can touch-type easily enough, and my typing speed is about what I'd expect from the device. My complaint with the keyboard is more that it's off-center, because of the directional pad. That still feels a bit awkward to me.

Have a Droid, and I'd suggest that the difference between the keys is subtle, but not non-existent. Best idea is to get your hands on one and try it. I love it and have had almost no problems typing on it, but it seems to be a love it/hate it sort of thing. That being said, I hated software keyboards... until the Droid. I actually find myself using the software keyboards (one for each orientation of the phone) more often than the hardware keyboard.

What about the Droid's software keyboards are different that makes them more usable?

I'm always trying to force myself to use the G1's software keyboard, but I can only seem to use it in one of two ways: wantonly mash and hope the predictive/spelling correction code figures out that I typed "devtsvuldt" but meant "spectacular" (thus pausing periodically to carefully click the correct suggestion), and occasionally being forced to abandon a word and backspace it out because it is so mangled that even Google's rocket scientists couldn't write a spelling corrector that can figure it out; or meticulously pecking words out letter-by-letter, trying to enter that zen-like state of mind where my fear of misspelling has been released, and my fat white thumb is free to alight on the correct section of touchscreen as if guided by the nameless Tao itself.

Both are excruciating compared to finding the two little nubbins on "F" and "J" and going from there.

Have you tried calibrating the soft keyboard? I found it frustrating until I did so on my Hero.

Unfortunately, I don't think the G1's soft keyboard can be calibrated.

If you root the device you can install the same HTC input manager (keyboard, AKA the HTC_IME) and use that as a replacement keyboard, which is MUCH better. It's better out of the box, and as Nwallins said, it's even better once calibrated.

Note for future readers: "Touch Input" (HTC_IME) can be installed as a package on the "vanilla" Android OS without rooting. It breaks your hardware keyboard, though (even on a rooted device).

>What about the Droid's software keyboards are different that makes them more usable?

You know, I hate to say it, but I don't actually know. I don't have large fingers, but I've always had trouble with software keyboards, from the iPhone to the Blackberry Storm family. Just today I was getting a Blackberry activated and found the experience of addressing a PIN message absolutely excruciating.

The Droid just seems to know what letter I'm going for, and almost always picks the right one. I'm not sure if this is a byproduct of better resolution on the touchscreen, more intelligent software in the background, or some quirk of my fingers and the Droid's particular implementation, but I simply don't experience trouble hitting keys anymore.

I suppose its possible that the change is me, not the Droid, but to this day I find most other platforms difficult to use, and pine for my Droid's keyboard whenever I'm on another software device.

I find the new Swype soft keyboard is much faster on Droid than the hardware keyboard or any of the other soft keyboards. It's even faster the best hardware keyboard I have used, the Treo 650. Swype takes an entirely new approach of tracing over the keys instead of pressing them.

http://www.androidcentral.com/download-beta-version-swype-an...

I have a droid, and the hardware keyboard is fine. There are little raised underscores on the F key and on the J key. It is ok for regular use, but probably not useful for development, as an example. Don't have a G1 to compare.

My gold standard for keyboards is still my hp200lx!

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