Omnia's touchscreen keyboard - not a fan!

[Guest freshmaker]

Right so after that lengthy post about the Omnia vs. Touch Pro last month finally got my hands on an Omnia in the local shop. Like I said in the post, was leaning heavily towards the Omnia but touchscreen keyboard had to be a good'un.

What a disappointment using the Omnia's touchscreen keyboard was! Now I knew all along that coming to this from the hardware keyboard on my Vario 2 was always going to be a big step and take some time getting used to but first impressions couldn't have been any worse. First off I used the full QWERTY keyboard mode in landscape as this is how I want to type messages. I always thought with the amount of screen real estate on the Omnia accuracy wouldn't be much of a problem for my fairly normalish size fingers. But even after typing out several practice lines I was still constantly making the occasional but annoying typo. And I'm someone who has always been comfortable using touch screens (never used my stylus on the Vario 2).

Most of all, it quickly became tiresome having to focus so much of my attention on where exactly each letter key was when I just wanted to get the message written. I reckon even after getting used to typing on the Omnia I would still be able to type over twice as fast on a hardware keyboard, with quite a few less typos along the way to boot.

Another annoyance was something I expected to be a positive - the haptic feedback. While it is great when using the dialer and other applications, the constant buzzing on your fingers becomes rather irritating when typing out messages and didn't help at all with giving a greater sense of input accuracy, as it doesn't quite seem to sync with your typing 100% of the time. I assume it can be disabled but I had expected it to be a very helpful feature when it came to text input, which it wasn't for me.

A final disappointment for me was the dimensions of the phone. Perhaps it just takes a little period of adjustment but the phone genuinely felt too oblong for me in my quick test. My hands are longer than average so you'd think this wouldn't be a problem but it just didn't feel quite right and I would have been happy with a slightly shorter length on the device for nimbler onscreen navigation.

So am I being too quick to judge? I see that others have experienced similar teething problems when moving from hardware keyboards to the Omnia's touchscreen, only to get used to it over time. But after this first run in with it I'm not so sure I would fall in that camp. Which is very annoying as I was really ready to give this phone some love!

Edited September 10, 2008 by freshmaker

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

The QWERTY isn't great, BUT... the 20 key is awesome (IMHO!)

I think you might be being a little hasty...

P

[Guest 3shirts]

The QWERTY isn't great, BUT... the 20 key is awesome (IMHO!)

I think you might be being a little hasty...

P

I agree. This is my first touch screen device as I was always sceptical about the keypad. I struggled for a few days with the qwerty keyboard and got to a point where I could just about type a text message without wanting to hurl the thing at the wall. Then I decided to have a play with the other input modes and found that the phonepad option is as easy to use as my N95. Now I can text like a demon again ;)

[Guest freshmaker]

The QWERTY isn't great, BUT... the 20 key is awesome (IMHO!)

I think you might be being a little hasty...

P

Newbie question no doubt but what is the 20 key input?

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

QWERTY style with 2 letters per key predictive style...

As seen in hardware forum on those blackberries and the HTC shadow...

P

[Guest freshmaker]

QWERTY style with 2 letters per key predictive style...

As seen in hardware forum on those blackberries and the HTC shadow...

P

Ah I see. Will pop back in the shop and give that a go. Will probably have to play it safe and order over the phone from T-Mob, even though it's currently out of stock, so I get the option to return after 7 days. Silly that you don't get this option when you buy one in the shop, who do have it in stock now.

[Guest freshmaker]

By the by, does this 20 key input system come in-built with the Omnia or is it an add-on piece of kit?

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Built in...

P

[Guest Unisoldrew]

Ah I see. Will pop back in the shop and give that a go. Will probably have to play it safe and order over the phone from T-Mob, even though it's currently out of stock, so I get the option to return after 7 days. Silly that you don't get this option when you buy one in the shop, who do have it in stock now.

My typing ability improved massively when I updated to HH1 so don't necessarily be put off by a phone in a shop as it's likely to be running older firmware.

Also - i strongly recommend installing SPB Mobile Shell which makes it much more finger happy when going through menu's etc.

[Guest cmloo]

seriously..i gave up on the samsung qwerty keyboard..using the htc diamond keyboard. you will be surprise it takes lesser effort and lesser typo mistakes even though the keys are smaller

Loved almost everything on the Omnia over TytnII except of the physical KB and the stupid "external" stylus

[Guest DavidC]

I'm also not a fan of the text input on the Omnia. I've found that it's worst when using Opera as the actual text input is really laggy.

My biggest gripe is that the button for scrolling down the list of suggestes words (using xt9) doesn't seem to respond to screen taps so I have to use the mouse pointer instead.

[Guest gil71]

Guys, are there any alternative Keyboard (Iphone like) which work not only in Portrait but also in Landscape mode? I could not find one yet. The most nice keyboard are only for QVGA or VGA, like PocketCM etc.

[Guest Deroo]

In my experience, the keyboard was crap until I switched over to DXHH3 rom, then everything was perfect. It puts my Iphone keyboard to shame now.

[Guest Unisoldrew]

Grrrr, i so want to give HH3 a go but after reading the bricking thread ..........

;)

[Guest Jlarsen]

Grrrr, i so want to give HH3 a go but after reading the bricking thread ..........

;)

I flashed to HH3 with no problems using the "official" exe

[Guest DavidC]

I need to find the courage to flash my i900V to HH3 then, cos the text entry is really starting to annoy me. I've put SPB Mobile Shell on and now loving everything else. Just that damn text entry.

I'll study the other threads and give HH3 a go this weekend.

[Guest melvynadam]

I received my Omnia 3 days ago and have switched from an HTC Wizard (hardware keyboard). The adjustment to the on-screen keyboard is tough. I immediately flashed to DXHK3 but as far as I can see, there's no "20 key" option for input. Has this been removed from ROMs newer than HH3? If not, how do I access it?

[Guest mobilehappy]

Guys, are there any alternative Keyboard (Iphone like) which work not only in Portrait but also in Landscape mode? I could not find one yet. The most nice keyboard are only for QVGA or VGA, like PocketCM etc.

SPB Keyboard

[Guest mobilehappy]

I received my Omnia 3 days ago and have switched from an HTC Wizard (hardware keyboard). The adjustment to the on-screen keyboard is tough. I immediately flashed to DXHK3 but as far as I can see, there's no "20 key" option for input. Has this been removed from ROMs newer than HH3? If not, how do I access it?

When you are in "use keyboard" mode, there is a small arrow on the bottom bar..clicking on that will give you choice of optional keyboards

Edited December 21, 2008 by mobilehappy

[Guest teslation]

so where can i get the 20keyboard thing to my omnia? its not built in i cant find it in my omnia keyboards!!

[Guest teslation]

hehe nevermind i found it :rolleyes: thx tho

[Guest mobilehappy]

so where can i get the 20keyboard thing to my omnia? its not built in i cant find it in my omnia keyboards!!

Samsung PhonePad - 3 letters pr. key

Samsung KeyPad - 2 letters pr. key

Samsung KeyBoard - 1 letter pr. key

[Guest melvynadam]

Samsung PhonePad - 3 letters pr. key

Samsung KeyPad - 2 letters pr. key

Samsung KeyBoard - 1 letter pr. key

Excellent! Thank you. That really does make a big difference. Suddenly I'm not so concerned at the chore of typing an email reply.

[Guest dorong]

Paul, this is by far the best tip i got for using the phone. i am so frustrated with using on-screen keyboard after having physical sliding keyboard for a few years (various HTC phones), the keypad sure helps. the biggest drawback is that it takes so much screen space so even if you make less typos it is still very difficult to work with emails (i heavily use it with exchange push mail), but that is true for any phone without physical keyboard.

[Guest krejcik]

Excellent! Thank you. That really does make a big difference. Suddenly I'm not so concerned at the chore of typing an email reply.

This sounds like a great tip, but I can't seem to get at it. I have selected the "samsung keypad", but it seems I can't get at the alpha keys. I only have numeric keys. There are 3 keys along the top: symbol (@#), T, and 123. It deafults to the 123 key but the T key is greyed out. I can also use the symbol (@#) key just fine.

Any idea what the deal is? I've only had this phone for a ouple of days and its pretty cool, but I'm getting frustrated on how many clicks it takes to do thing that I could just do from the Today screen on my TREO 700wx.

Thanks for any help,

-Ed