Life with an HTC Touch: Week 3

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By Tim Danton on his Touch

Posted on 16 Jul 2007 at 12:01

To accompany Ian Wrigley's Life with an iPhone article, we've decided to run a parallel piece about Life with an HTC Touch. Think of it as a blog-review, as Tim Danton, editor of PC Pro, provides a hands-on, personal, real-life view of using the Touch day to day.

In this third update, he tries out a new piece of software designed to make it much easier to type directly on-screen with just a finger. Look out for updates every Monday.

Week 3: Putting my finger on it

So, here's a challenge. To write this whole entry using the SPB Full Screen Keyboard, downloadable from www.spbsoftwarehouse.com.

Why? Because our perennial criticism of the Touch has been the difficulty of actually getting data into the thing. The idea behind the fullscreen keyboard is that it completely takes over the screen, leaving just a small display at the top to show the last three or four words that you've typed. When you get to the end of the chunk of data you're writing, such as a paragraph or text message, you press the keyboard icon in the bottom-left corner and the text is pasted into your application of choice.

It's certainly a vast improvement on Windows Mobile's built-in methods: after using it for three or four days, I reckon I can type around 25 words per minute with a fair wind. The main hurdle is that the keys are still small, so you have to be precise and learn any slight quirks in your screen calibration. For instance, I have to hit towards the left of the "n" or an m appears instead. The inevitable lack of separate keys for punctuation such as semi-colons and apostrophes is also frustrating. But, overall, I'd recommend the fullscreen keyboard to anyone who buys the Touch. And I'd also strongly recommend HTC to bundle it in the next iteration of this device.

I'd also like the company to work on a touch-friendly skin for the Calendar and Contacts apps. As things stand, I just get dropped into the not-at-all touch-friendly versions developed by Microsoft, which make it difficult to even find contacts without resorting to a stylus, let alone entering new details.

All of which leaves me wondering if Microsoft needs to start seriously redesigning the interface of its mobile OS. You only need to read Ian Wrigley eulogise about the joy of using the touch-orientated iPhone to realise how important the touchscreen could become.

If there are any other features of the phone you'd like me to investigate, let me know by posting a message in Comments.

Click here to read part 3 of Life with an iPhone

Click here to read part 2 of Life with an HTC Touch

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