Predictive Texting - Yay or nay?

[gogoblender 3,069]

Any of you guys use this? Just the other day the "feeling" came upon me. It's mostly because I have a company phone, pearl 8130 with a strange compressed keyboard. Kind of like a Qwerty, but not...quite^^ I use mult tap on it, which is okay, but I really like typing fast, and multi tap means I have to wait for the mode to switch from first letter on a key to "set" that letter before I can move onto another one. For letter keys that have the letter I want as a second key it's okay because I can hit the key quickly twice in a row which "sets" the letter for that key.

 

With the predictive, it's kind of unintuitive presently, but absolutely delightful when the choice of words it offers is one of the words that is in my head! I then did some reading on predictive typing, and one article writer described the road to this technology's success in two easy words.

 

Type and Trust

 

This means, use the tool regularly, it begins to remember your word usage, and your typing gains speed by about a few letters per word.

 

Anyone here an expert with this yet? I actually like texting out tons of notes to family and friends on the walk to the Metro to work in the morning and on the bus.

 

 

gogo

[Legend Aadil 4]

Alas, the auto correct can be deadly too.

 

iPhone auto correct especially, mixing up words which you'll never have wished to be mixed, and being sent to the person because of the instant message system

[Stormwing 40]

An absolute nay for predictive texting. I absolutely hate it personally. Luckily I don't have I-phone, that'd be a fiasco in my hands...

Still, with my current ZTE Blade I'm quite satisfied with my typing speed. Also, I don't use that much text messages so it ain't that useful anyway for me.

[Delta! 985]

I HATE predictive texting, I have never used it, and never will. In South Africa, you don't speak/write only English, it can be Afrikaans, or a mixture of the 11 "official languages"...

 

Delta!

[lujate 576]

My Droid does all right. There are a few words it has issues with. I cannot get a lower case "I" without the quotes, which is a hassle for work.

[Legend Aadil 4]

Yeah, it's more time wasted for most people rather than trying to speed up things!

[Dragon Brother 619]

Hmmm...back when I had an old nokia 'dumbphone' I thought it was rather useful. Its much easier than trying to type using a numberpad and clicking the right key a certain number of times to get the right letter. Since I've gotten better phones though, like my iphone, it works better, the auto correct is useful most of the typing when you mistype a letter or two, and seeing as I proof read my texts I pick up on any dodgy autocorrects.

[podgie_bear 184]

There were several articles about this subject in the national newspapers recently and some of the problems caused by using predictive text without proofreading before sending the messages. It seems that far from speeding things up, it caused people to take longer by having to check and correct the predictive stuff. One example I remember being mentioned was a man sending a text to his friend claiming that he would be "coming out of the clinic soon", but the predictive text was sent as "coming out of the closet soon". It had unforseen consequences for his teaching career and caused a major problem for his marriage before it all got sorted. Another mentioned was between a person and her boss and an innocent text had its meaning altered by predictive text, insulted her boss and almost lost her her job.

 

I hate it personally, because I tend to try and text fast, but unless I reread and correct everything I send, I would be another example of it messing everything up. It's like Microsoft programs being "helpful", it takes 3 times as long having to undo the helpful efforts.

Edited August 25, 2011 by podgie_bear

[Dragon Brother 619]

I hate it personally, because I tend to try and text fast, but unless I reread and correct everything I send, I would be another example of it messing everything up. It's like Microsoft programs being "helpful", it takes 3 times as long having to undo the helpful efforts.

 

It can be annoying if there are mistakes like those you mention, I find that proof reading as I go gives the most speed and accuracy.

[cyclops 15]

Hated it the first time I tried it because it is not giving the words I actually need.

[gogoblender 3,069]

hahaha this is fave to hate or not ^^ Well... as it turns out, the predictive is unbelievablyl useful for me, only becuase my strange keyboard only comes with a smaller number of keys, of which I had to constantly wait to tap to get to the second letter. Now the predictive, I type so much, it's gotten to know all my words. I just pretend to type out the word, and by the time I get to the last letter, the phone has already figgered out what I was going to type, and when I click enter, Bingo.. tis there!

 

I kinda wish I could look at the screen when I'm typing just to see what the word looks like half way through it, but I find that that distracts me from just typing in the entire word quickly.

 

I would say that predictive beats out mulitap absolutely. I'm still trying to see whether I feel like looking up halfway through a word to see if the word that appears is what's in my head. If I get to that point, my speed will jump up even more.

 

Course... nothing beats a full keyboard... no matter what, my next phone is definitely gonna have one. Touch screen is neat, but a slideout with real touchy keys is calling out to me.

 

 

gogo