iPhone Typing Speed Put To the Test

Previously we have written about how to type 40WPM on your iPhone and also tried a Swype vs iPhone speed test. But how does the iPhone’s keyboard compare to other devices, such as a pen and paper, keyboard, Apple Newton, Palm Graffiti and Treo?

Phil Gyford performed an interesting test putting all of these writing methods to the test. Surprisingly enough, from Phil’s results the iPhone ended up being second only to his computer keyboard. He typed the following 221 word passage in his test:

I have enough faith in my fellow creatures in Great Britain to believe that when they have got over the delirium of the television, when they realize that their new homes that they have been put into are mortgaged to the hilt, when they realize that the moneylender has been elevated to the highest position in the land, when they realize that the refinements for which they should look are not there, that it is a vulgar society of which no decent person could be proud, when they realize all those things, when the years go by and they see the challenge of modern society not being met by the Tories who can consolidate their political powers only on the basis of national mediocrity, who are unable to exploit the resources of their scientists because they are prevented by the greed of their capitalism from doing so, when they realize that the flower of our youth goes abroad today because they are not being given opportunities of using their skill and their knowledge properly at home, when they realize that all the tides of history are flowing in our direction, that we are not beaten, that we represent the future: then, when we say it and mean it, then we shall lead our people to where they deserve to be led!

As you can see from the following infographic, here were Phil’s results:

I found these results interesting and decided to try it out myself. I concentrated my tests on the keyboard and iPhone tests to see how I would compare. I would call myself a pretty good typist on the iPhone, but was I able to even come close to Phil’s blistering time of just under 5 minutes? Here are my results:

Keyboard: 3:35
iPhone first attempt: 6:56
iPhone second attempt (split up paragraphs): 6:27

As you can see, Phil was a minute and a half faster than my time. I found that since I had not memorized the passage like Phil did, I had to keep on looking up to see what to type next. So for the second test I split up the passage into 5 smaller chunks to make up for the lack of memorization. It helped me improve my time, but I still would find it hard to shave off another 1 minute and 30 seconds.

How fast can you type on your iPhone? On your lunch break, type out the passage above and let me know what your time is compared to Phil’s time and mine. I used this online stopwatch to time my test. The fastest time gets bragging rights!

[via Daring Fireball]

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