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Comment by xauronx | Hacker News Reader

> "their auto-correct is garbage"

The last three people who switched from iPhone to Android asked me what was wrong with Androids auto-correct and why it didn't "work". They ended up having to install a third party keyboard to get anything they could stand to interact with.

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Autocorrect is one of the most common complaints I see about the iPhone. Whether it's professional reviewers or normal users, there seems to be a consensus that the stock Android keyboard and autocorrect have now surpassed their iOS counterparts.

I'm not sure what your friends were doing or which phones they had, but as others have said, Android at least offers you the ability to switch keyboards if the stock keyboard doesn't fit your personal typing style. If the stock iOS keyboard doesn't work for you, tough luck. No keyboard will work for 100% of the population, so the ability to customize it is a clear winner in this situation.

I am an Android user, and I complain about the autocorrect (and keyboard) frequently. Maybe the iPhone would be the same for me, but others appear to breeze through typing on the iPhone, while I encounter a constant stream of backing up to fix typos, etc.

And regarding third party keyboards, how about Google do a good keyboard that doesn't require installing a third party app? Is that too much to ask? It seems like an important enough feature to do right instead of abdicating responsibility to others.

Which phone are you using? I have a Nexus with the stock 4.1 (Jelly Bean) keyboard and it corrects everything as expected -- proximity errors, misspellings, contractions, hyphenation, capitalization, etc.

Android also shows you a list of potential matches for what you typed, and you can add new words to the dictionary on the fly just by selecting the word you've entered from the list. Not to mention it only takes a single backspace to undo a bad autocorrect on Android.

> And regarding third party keyboards, how about Google do a good keyboard that doesn't require installing a third party app? It seems like an important enough feature to do right instead of abdicating responsibility to others.

No keyboard will please 100% of smartphone users. The only way to make everyone happy is to let them pick the keyboard that suits them best.

I have a S3 and have all kinds of auto-correct issues I didn't ever have on my iPhone4. For example, it will auto-correct numbers. I will input something like 5 and it will default autocorrect to a phonenumber e.g. 5605432760 that begins with a 5.

Just the other day I tried to type in "damn" and it was constantly auto-corrected to "Damon". Never had anything like this happen on iOS.

I have an iPhone and iPad and one of my top 3 complaints is how garbage the auto correct is. It's not just auto correct, it's how you have to hit the tiny [x] on the suggestion to dismiss it. The [x] is to small, its not near the keyboard, and on some web sites, clicking but missing can have unexpected results.

I also have a bunch of incorrect spellings that I have accidentally added - I can't edit remove these though.

I've been seriously considering getting an Android and this along with not being able to change the default email client and browser are the main reasons.

Really? I've not had any issues with the autocorrect. I agree that dismissing the auto correct can be annoying sometimes. I intend to hit the X and instead hit the word, so it corrects to that. However, I can type complete nonsense, a row off, and it figures it out. My coworker tells me his android won't correct "sre" to "are" (as my iPhone will) because it assumes the first letter is correct. This is a top of the line android device (not sure what the model is though).

> My coworker tells me his android won't correct "sre" to "are" (as my iPhone will) because it assumes the first letter is correct.

Strange.

I just tested this on my two-year-old HTC phone with android v2.3.4 and it corrected "sre" to "are" just fine.

Any chance your coworker is using a non-standard keyboard (either by choice or vendor caprice)?

Given Steve Job's iconic quote about the stylus, it's rather sort of ironic that the autocorrect UI (eg. close x) on the iPhone is better-suited for use with a stylus than a fingertip.

yes, but they could install a 3rd party keyboard.

Yes, but that they needed to was my comment. Personally, even as a mobile developer, customizing my phone is not my hobby. I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want.

> I'd prefer a new foreign car that has certain limitations to a used Jeep that I can extend in any way I want.

Are you sure about that?

Absolutely. I need my phone to work, be simple and reliable, not require much/any maintenance. Similarly, I prefer a nice car with a warranty that I don't have to worry about or have any hassle with. A jeep might be cheaper, and when it runs slow I could install something to fix it, or if I don't like the steering wheel I could personalize it easily... but, for something I use every day and depend on, I just want it to be there and not have to deal with any complications. I'm ok with the one-size fits all steering wheel, the research driven interface on my stock radio, etc etc.

But you need specific skills to customize your Jeep. On Android it takes 30 seconds and no skill to install the keyboard you want.

It's not a very hard thing to do, I'm sure as a mobile developer you don't mind installing apps other than the ones that come with your phone. A different keyboard is just another app to fulfil a need, go to the Store, click install, new keyboard. Done.

Not really. Parts are cheap and most are bolt on. It's just a matter of preference, which is why all of these droid vs apple discussions are circle jerks.

The ability to customize a Jeep is not a mainstream selling point. Whether it is easy or not is irrelevant for most consumers.

Touché

Which is nice, but it's a bit like someone saying "this road is an accident black spot" and you replying "yes, but it's near the hospital".

No, it's a bit like saying "yes, but you can go around it using this free four-lane highway that works great."

It's still a shame that your Google GPS told you to take the dirt road though.

In this increasingly strained metaphor the problem is that all the road signs (that is a normal person's default) still point to the black spot.

If it was the Galaxy that was Samsung's fault. It was the most infuriating autocorrect I've ever seen. If you hit space then back spaced to correct a word you typed it tried to autocorrect your correction but not the whole world.

Google should just buy Swiftkey. It's pretty great, and I love its Flow (Swype-like) feature, too.

Just buy Swype! :-)

Then you'd miss the SwiftKey prediction options, which allow me to tap out common sentences in a breeze, and the multiple active languages, a huge plus in countries with multiple languages. :)

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