11 August 2008

Keypad Makes Way For Control Surfaces
Which Is Better, T9 or Qwerty?

Vaibhav Sharma of the Symbian Blog has posted an interesting article I hope everyone will give a look.

Titled Nokia E71 vs. Nokia E90 vs. T9 - Which Is The Fastest?, the article speaks for itself.

It puts the Nokia E71 and E90 against an Nokia N95, and ends all the talk and speculation about speeds and accuracy of the two text entry methods.

The tests were well thought out, and even had controls and averaging to get more accurate results. I think a similar but more in depth test of this nature should be developed to test the many future input methods being developed today, especially touchscreen interfaces.

The results were somewhat surprising, but not overly so. I wished the author had mentioned that the T9 scores were achieved using one hand, and the QWERTY using two. No mention was made of the diminished ability to physically do anything else while using two hands versus one, giving T9 added multitasking points for mobile users leading active lifestyles. In essence, the T9 scores should be doubled, as each hand could achieve the same score simultaneously.

And I still found it to be an excellent review, nonetheless. I hope it's updated and revised for more extensive testing.