The first iPhone keyboard for Windows Mobile released - verdict: awful
July 11, 2007 [Pocket PC phone] | By Edward J. R.
We have tested it (here: in HTC Touch phone):
... and it works completely differently, than virtual keyboard of Apple iPhone! Notably there are 2 major differences:
- in iPhone a button is pressed when finger is lifted, so users can glide with finger over the keyboard until they will find proper letter and the letter is entered once the finger is lifted! In this virtual keyboard for Windows Mobile pressing the button, not releasing the button, is invoking the key press event, what means that "narrowing down" of the letter by gliding over the keyboard is impossible.
- in iPhone upon pressure of some key, it is being increased in size significantly, so that the letter is visible even with finger covering the original space of the letter! In other words finger is not covering the letter that it is pressing at given moment. In this virtual keyboard for Windows Mobile however, although the button is displayed with increased size, it is not big enough so finger is still covering it.
To learn more, to get installation instructions or to download this virtual keyboard for Windows Mobile, click here.
Conclusion: the first attempt to imitate iPhone's virtual keyboard has failed. The reason behind this failure is, that this keyboard is actually just a skin for a very old soft-keyboard. Clearly making a virtual keyboard for Windows Mobile, that would work exactly like the keyboard of Apple iPhone is possible and there is even no need to develop auto-completion/auto-correction of words because this feature already exists in Windows Mobile. However one needs to write such new virtual keyboard with "reversed behavior" (button is pressed when finger is lifted) and much bigger keys for "key pressed" events! Is there any Windows Mobile developer out there to take on this challenge?
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