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Comment by stephencanon | Hacker News Reader

> I'll still be able to get more work done than you because I can type much, much faster, and an order of magnitude more accurately.

No, you really won't. Autocorrect and predictive keyboards work great; even with a stock setup, one can type at close to full speed on a touchscreen so long as you ignore the apparent (pre-correction) errors. Add to that the increased screen area of touchscreen devices, and you will find that they are actually more productive -- you can type slightly faster with a physical keyboard, but at the cost of much less context.

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I don't know about that. I own and have owned plenty of phones, of all three divisions (though some much less recently than others).

As an exercise, let us consider the usability of a terminal emulator on a somewhat-recent Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S3). This[0] is a screenshot of what it looks like if I want to type into a terminal emulator using a software-based keyboard. Notice that it is very cramped, and that few lines are available to see. It's pretty much a totally unworkable amount of space.

Now consider this hypothetical screenshot[1] without the software based keyboard. The difference in usability is night and day; the screen real-estate has more than doubled.

Not only does it mean you can actually use all the screen you have, you also get things that are really useful for dealing with text, things like arrow keys to move backwards and forwards exactly as many characters you want, or tab keys that allow for actual text editing/serious console usage.

I realize that for most people, these are total non-issues. And that's totally cool. I have also been in the position of not needing a high-functioning handheld device. However, there are thousands of phones for people who "just want to browse the web", or "just want to share pictures." However, there's pretty much no phones for people that want highly-functional handheld tools to get things done. That's what I'm looking for. Till then, I'll just have to hold onto my good old G2...

[0] - http://i.imgur.com/MJXgSum.png [1] - http://i.imgur.com/fG7TFLW.png

> one can type at close to full speed on a touchscreen so long as you ignore the apparent (pre-correction) errors.

And as long as you ignore the actual, glaring errors every time you use a word that hasn't been added to the dictionary yet. Oh, what fun it is to try to discuss technical subjects, or video games, or music, or pretty much any topic whatsoever that uses jargon or slang. The time lost to noticing an error, going back, correcting it, and regaining your flow can easily cut your effective WPM in half.

And that's not even considering the joys of terminal emulators, where autocorrect is so much worse than useless that it's generally disabled by default.

Obviously you've never tried to use a terminal on your phone. Touch screen keyboards are massively inferior.

This is `exactly` why I need a keyboard on my phone.

I got my current iPhone (my first smartphone) in 2011. Before that I had an LG Envy Touch, with a phenomenal keyboard. I type fast on my iPhone, but I reckon I'm still 1.5 to 2x slower than with a physical phone keyboard. You can really hustle with a physical keyboard. All that said, if a keyboarded smartphone was fast and bug-free-enough I'd jump ship for the keyboard alone.

Try using ssh to restart a failed service, or quickly grep through a log file with the on screen keyboard...

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