A quick blog from the Galaxy Tab

Posted on 18 October 2010, Last updated on 18 October 2010 by

There’s only omen way to test the on-screen-keyboard on the Galaxy Tab and that’s to use it!

Im currently lying down with the Galaxy Tab in portrait mode, a small amount of haptic applied to the keyboard and I’ve enabled error correction and word prediction. It’s working amazingly well.

The weight is good in portrait Moses and i guess im running at about 60%of my normal typing speed. Numeric slow the process down though.

I’ve tried Swype but can’t really get over the learning curve needed there. To be honest, with this keyboard working so well why would i need another?

Oh and to time the post im recording this on video. It will be the most boring video I’ve ever published!

Update: It took 6 minutes to write the text and another 5 minutes to correct and post.

Update: Auto-correction errors left in the post.

Update: Video of the post being made on the Galaxy Tab. (Be warned, this is boring!)

10 Comments For This Post

  1. C Pham says:

    Uh oh, I still notice some error-correction mistakes in the posting. Though honestly, I find “portrait Moses” rather cute. Would you mind doing a landscape test as well?

  2. chippy says:

    Yes.There are a few in there. I’m leaving them in so that people can see what happened. Its true that post-processing on a tablet is pretty hard.

    Just uploading the video of this post right now. It’s boring but shows the typing speed.

  3. C Pham says:

    Thanks for the clarification. I am enjoying your test videos quite a lot, so I’m looking forward to seeing more!

    Oh and before I forget, would you do a test with the front-facing camera as well?

  4. turn.self.off says:

    Hehe, omen and moses makes it sound as if something about to go religious ;)

  5. PJE says:

    Chippy, Have you tried SwiftKey? I find it to be by far the fastest keyboard for bulk text entry. It predicts/corrects what you’re typing and also suggests the next word which can lead to surprisingly quick text entry.

  6. chippy says:

    Thx for the tip.
    I’ve actually used the Samsung keyboard software before and am quite impressed. I intend to persue with the option (under the principle that it’s best to invest time in learning a solution than to switch to a new solution) and i’ll probably turn word prediction off because i’m too fast to even see the proposed words!
    If it doesn’t work out i’ll check out SwiftKey tho.
    I may do a test in the future with the Tab so i’ll also bear it in mind for that.
    Thx again.
    Steve

  7. PJE says:

    Chippy, Another keyboard to try is Ultra Keyboard (as recommended by James Kendrick at JKOnTheRun). It allows you to shrink the keyboard size down, which may be useful on the 7″ screen. I use it to shrink the keyboard on my Droid around 25% vertically, and it’s still surprisingly usable.

  8. Jez@SammyTablet says:

    So 60% of normal speed sounds like you are slowed down a fair bit. Is typing a tedious process? I find I can type pretty well on the default Android keyboard on my phone but it’s still not quite pleasent enough for me to want to use it other than because I have no choice!

    I’ve sat next to a few iPad owners on the train when I’ve had my netbook out and I must say the tablet looks laborious to use in comparison. Not that I’d be getting a tab to do lots of writing on, but it would be nice not to be put off from doing so.

  9. Kevin N says:

    6 minutes for this little post? You do need to force yourself to learn swype!

  10. jjsjjsva says:

    Why not voice-to-text option? There’s already software that will convert my voice to text on a PC, so why not on cell phones and tablets. So much for texting while driving. Windows can speak text, so incorporate that as well.

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