The fastest smartphone in the west? Text input speeds compared

Published by Steve Litchfield at 16:36 BST, May 15th 2006

Steve Litchfield directly compares speeds of text entry on a range of PDAs and smartphones and draws some conclusions about design and general form factor.

There are, of course, as many different form factors for PDAs and smartphones as there are stars in the sky. Well, almost, and only if you count all the different subtle differences in weight and size as well. But at some point, you're to have to put information into this device, if only to scribble in a Calendar appointment or a new contact's details. Or perhaps to write a few emails or text messages. Or maybe even to write up a report or continue your first novel. In each case, the speed at which you can easily get text into each device will play a major part in which is the best one to choose.

As a rule, the larger the device, the more chance it'll have a useable QWERTY keyboard of some kind, a necessity if you plan to input more than about 500 words a week. To test the speeds of a variety of typical mobile hardware, I first needed to think up a suitable test. Here's the text I used:

"Train arrives in Nottingham at 15:20, Pete will meet me on the platform. Remember to bring meeting notes."
and
"I resigned myself to the fact that I no longer had 20/20 vision"

32 words in total, but including numbers, some punctuation and an odd name (Nottingham, not Pete!). In the case of each device, I practised a little first and then timed myself entering the strings of text, correcting any typos as I went. In each case, I did the test twice and included the average result below.

PDA or smartphone		Class	Time for test text input (secs)	Calculated words per minute (wpm)	Estimated number of comfortable words input in a typical day
Nokia 9500		Series 80 keyboarded communicator	52	37	500
T-Mobile MDA Pro		Windows Mobile 5 keyboarded communicator	53	37	500
Nokia E90		New S60 3rd Edition communicator	55	35	500
Nokia 9300		Series 80 keyboarded communicator	60	32	250
i-Mate K-JAM		Windows Mobile 5 keyboarded communicator	65	29	200
Nokia E70		S60 3rd Edition device with usable but slightly gimmicky fold-over keyboard	66	28	200
Nokia E61		S60 3rd edition communicator with thumb keyboard	67	28	200
iPaq 2210		Typical Pocket PC, using stylus on on-screen keyboard	96	20	100
Nokia N70		Typical S60 candy-bar smartphone, using predictive text	114	17	60
Sony Ericsson P900		Stylus-based UIQ smartphone	122	16	60
Palm TX		Typical stylus-based PDA, using Palm OS and Graffiti 2 character recognition	123	16	60
Nokia N70		S60 candy-bar smartphone, using multi-tap on number keypad	163	11	40

Most notable from the above table is the bottom row. As commented on in the comments to my posting of the feature on predictive text, the vast number of teenagers around the world who 'text' backwards and forwards are all using multi-tap input, by FAR the slowest method of all. Now, some handsets may not have T9 installed, but there's no such excuse with Nokia's S60 range. If you're still using multi-tap input then look at the figures above and resolve to learn to use predictive text more.

In terms of the spread of speeds, there are no huge surprises. Where there's a qwerty keyboard involved, speeds will be higher, and the bigger the keyboard the faster your text input speeds. I've included the final column as my estimate of how many words you'd want to input on each device every day before you started to get heartily fed up. For example, if you know for a fact that you average half a dozen appointments, a couple of new contacts, a new note, three SMSs and six emails a day, a quick 'back of an envelope' calculation shows that you'll be typing somewhere in the region of 250 words a day. Look in the table above and you can quickly eliminate all the slower devices. As always, we're all different though, as is borne out by the tremendous range of hardware form factors represented above.

You'll note that I haven't factored in using an external Bluetooth keyboard. Buying such an accessory - obviously - brings most of these devices up to exactly the same level, and there's no reason why you can't type almost as fast on a Bluetooth keyboard as you would on your home desktop computer. If you need to input significant text and yet you fancy the smaller size of the devices at the bottom end of the table above, then an external keyboard that you can connect when needed makes a lot of sense.

The fastest gun in the West? Ahem....

PDA or smartphone		Class	Time for test text input (secs)	Calculated words per minute (wpm)	Estimated number of comfortable words input in a typical day
Psion Series 5mx		8 year old keyboarded palmtop!	49	39	1000

It's the Psion 5mx, which was discontinued seven years ago! No problem, let's go for the second best placed device - the Nokia 9500. Oh, Nokia seem to be discontinuing that, too, judging by how hard it is to buy one nowadays... Dare I recommend AAS readers switch camps and buy the Windows Mobile 5-powered HTC Universal, in its various brandings? You'd gain faster integrated typing but would take a bit hit in other areas. You'll have to draw your own conclusions!

Steve Litchfield, Feb 2007, for AAS and 3-Lib

Relevant link: my article on qwerty keyboards on smartphones and my interactive device comparison Grid.

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Categories: Comment, Hardware
Platforms: Series 60, Series 80, Series 90, UIQ, General, N-Gage