Quick and QWERTY: phone typists nearly as fast as physical keyboard users, with smart handsets changing the way we type
- Those using two-thumb technique on their mobiles can register a blazing 38 words per minute, study finds
- Mobile phone typists who use auto-correct are also faster than those who use word-prediction tools
Tapping out a message with a finger or two on a smartphone is catching up to the speed of typing on a traditional keyboard.
Two-thumbed typists on a mobile phone virtual keyboard generated an average of about 38 words per minute in an experiment researchers describe as the largest to date on mobile typing.
That is still a quarter less than the 51.56 word-per-minute average achieved by users of physical keyboards, but the gap isn’t as big as expected, researchers say; in fact, they confessed to being amazed by the results.
Mobile typists who use auto-correct are faster than those who use word-prediction tools, according to the study, which tested 37,000 volunteers and was carried out by researchers at Finland’s Aalto University, the University of Cambridge in the UK and ETH Zürich in Switzerland.
Many children grow up with some kind of school training in how to type – 10 fingers on the keyboard, index fingers on the F and J keys, looking at the paper or the screen instead of the keys. Earlier devices such as the BlackBerry promoted typing on miniature keyboards, too. Now, most smartphone users type on their devices with one or two thumbs. Some also type with a single index finger.
As the smartphone has claimed a bigger and bigger portion of our communications, many educators and researchers have posed questions about the longer-term effects the move to typing on a digital keyboard may have – particularly on younger generations.
