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What astounds most ist that we have now ~16 years of Android and there is still no all around decent keyboard for power users. It seems like everybody has accep
by atoav 2y ago
What astounds most ist that we have now ~16 years of Android and there is still no all around decent keyboard for power users. It seems like everybody has accepted to use Android just as a consumer OS.
When I started using Unexpected Keyboard the realization that I can just shift + arrow select text and ctrl + x cut it hit me like a bag of bricks. This is such a simple thing, but the existing story for marking and editing text is so bad on phones that I nearly forgot that just making existing shortcuts available would already be a sifnificant improvement.
Sadly unexpected keyboard has other flaws, like no prediction/correction, no swype and less typing accuracy since there are no statistics on where you hit buttons that could adjust the collision borders etc.
- codedokode 2y agoI think the reason is that after you got used to full-sized keyboards, typing on a tiny screen portion with any software keyboard is just a pain. I cannot type more than several words on a smartphone without getting annoyed.
- 1propionyl 2y agoAs a counterpoint I type at around 90wpm on a physical keyboard (preference is for low carry), but thumb type over 130wpm on a modestly large touch screen keyboard. The quality of the auto-correction afforded by the operating system matters quite a bit.
- codedokode 2y agoBut auto-correction is possible with physical keyboards too, right? Also it is hard to believe that you can bend your fingers so fast to produce 2 words per second without getting tired.
- stavros 2y ago> But auto-correction is possible with physical keyboards too, right? I don't think so, the mistakes you tend to make with physical keyboards are more on the "entirely wrong finger for this letter", rather than "pressed the key right next to it by mistake".
- atoav 2y agoYeah sure, but how does that work e.g. for code? I wrote 75% of my MA thesis on my phone while waiting for the bus. But that is text that the keyboard was good at predicting — when you have to write a lot of cryptic symbols all of that falls apart pretty quickly.
- 1propionyl 2y agoThe solution is to just not try to type LaTeX on your phone. I'm not sure what else to say.
- rjh29 2y agoHave you tried swipe-based input methods? Given a bit of time to learn your style they are much higher WPM and less error-prone than trying to press non-tactile keys on a screen.
- gadders 2y agoAgreed. I forget the name of my preferred one, but they sadly went bust a few years back. It had features that the Samsung equivalent still lacks.
- stavros 2y agoAre you using an iPhone? iOS keyboards are terrible, to the point where I'm considering switching back to Android. SwiftKey on Android is magical, I just randomly punch keys in the vicinity of the letter I want and it figures out what I mean. I might type faster on Android than on my desktop PC.
- elashri 2y agoHave you tried SwiftKey on iOS? I use it mainly because it is the only keyboard app that supports arabic well and because it has better themes. I don't know how much better or worse it is compared to the android version though.
- stavros 2y agoI have (I'm typing on it now). It's abysmal, and it's stupid things missing, like configurable long-press duration, a comma key, or a symbols layer. They could have easily made it the same as on Android, but they didn't, and I have no idea why. Android is orders of magnitudes faster to type on, it's baffling why they wouldn't just add the features to their iOS one.
- pmontra 2y agoI didn't know about Unexpected Keyboard. I'll give it a try. Samsung's keyboard on my tablet does Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X like a PC. It does more than that. I remember that holding Ctrl highlights a few keys hinting to the allowed combinations. Probably Ctrl-A is among them. It's not close to me now so I cannot check. I'm using Hacker's keyboard on my phone in Connect Bot to be able to use the arrow keys to navigate in the shell. It does also all the other key combinations that are useful on a terminal. I also don't want my normal keyboard to remember what I'm typing in my ssh sessions.
- ajb 2y agoDefinitely. There seems to be a long-standing bug in g-board where you tap a suggested word, it's highlighted (IE, it recognised that you tapped) and then - it just ignores it? So frustrating. Will be watching this thread to see people's suggestions...
- lucumo 2y agoI'm mostly fine with the default keyboard as it is, but I keep getting tripped up on the location of the backspace key. The key you use to correct erroneous input was somehow put right next to the key to confirm correct input. Because of this I've sent way too many badly worded, typo-riddled and incomplete messages.
- gitaarik 2y agoWow! Unexpected Keyboard is awesome! Just trying it out now and typing this message on it. It feels like I finally have some of the flexibility from the desktop keyboard back. It also just really feels like a nice keyboard from first use. And to have a control button and be able to select text by holding the shift button and moving the cursor is a game changer. Even Ctrl+Z works! Yeah it's too bad it doesn't have auto-complete. But suspect that with the better controls, the need for auto-complete becomes a lot less. Well, I'll try it out for some time and see how it goes. In any case it's nice for dev work on Android anyway (what it was designed for). Not that I like to do that all too much on Android, but it's nice to be able to do it when your laptop is not available.
- pjmlp 2y agoI just use whatever the tablet has (Samsung, Huawei, Xiommi) they are good enough, given how tablets overtook netbook's market share. And for other activities, the stylus, as a proper tablet. Although I do agree, input reckognition on Android is still way behind the kind of apps that are available on iPadOS, but that is mostly app developer's issue, not Android itself.