going INSANE BY ERIS KEYBOARD

[bobbygoode1]

This is basic - not ready for the arcane syncing questions etc: I just got the eris a few days ago, my first PDA (!), upgraded from Samsung Alias with the swivel qwerty hard keyboard I loved... I did eschew paying the extra $99 at Verizon for the Motorola... okay, so either I'm just not used to the "virtual" keyboard, but the thing makes me INSANE - "aiming" at keys - and the spelling "help" has got me in trouble a couple of times. Is it a learning curve? Is it patience? Is there a tip n trick? I was all set to send it back and bite the bullet & get the Droid proper. Otherwise I think it's a great device, still trying to figure out all the bells & whistles. But keyboard typing doesn't seem to be getting better. I dread having to write more than a sentence. THANKS!

 

[smacky]

Most people think the Droid slide out keyboard is crap. As for the one on the screen, the Droid has a slightly larger screen, but how much of a difference it makes, I dunno.

I get a little frustrated with my keyboard at times, so I turn it to landscape mode and it seems to ease up a lot of anger.

One thing I'm anxious for is the voice to text feature of 2.1. Whenever that comes out, I feel I'll dabble with that for a little bit and see how much that pisses me off, and whichever pisses me off less will be the one I use. I do write vulgar texts between friends, so it'll be funny to condition the phone to spell them correctly. I think even funnier would be me spelling out these words aloud in public. Nah, I won't go that far.

 

[Caddyman]

Bang it out man ...... just keep typing. You can be really inacurate and it guesses really good

Eta: you can also try the other keyboard. Press the gear on the keyboard and you get more options.

 

[OfTheDamned]

The compact qwerty works really well.

 

[Jgraham49]

I'm also a fan of the compact qwerty

 

[thetingster]

Yes. Compact qwerty. Ftw!

 

[kar0la420]

The compact qwerty is excellent in landscape..especially if you have big thumbs...also make sure you calibrate the keyboard in settings. It helps.

 

[Graves935]

i find it difficult at times too. The phone does however "learn" words you teach it and gets better. And yes i agree, "bang it out man"... the phone does a decent job in correcting once it learns those certain words not programmed into it.

 

[jreed2560]

first thing i type is all the curse words. Nothing like going on a ducking rant and the shot doesn't come out like it dame well should!

 

[MOS95B]

Or, be like me and just not know how to type in the first place.

I have never been a big text-er (even though it's pretty much the only way I can communicate with my kids), so I never got used to any tiny keyboards. Therefore, I type so slowly on my Eris, that I have more than enough time to verify the spell checker. Usually. It did change Narwhals to "marshalls" on me once.

I will not explain my need to use the word Narwhals....

In all seriousness, it took me a few days to get used to the keyboard, but it does work rather well with a bit of practice.

 

[AwesomeIT]

Droid Eris: My keyboard is a neural net keyboard, a learning keyboard.

The more you use the Eris for texting the more it learns words that it doesn't have in the dictionary and like everybody said it is extremely good at error correcting. I didn't think I'd ever be able to type as fast on the Eris as I did on my Curve and I wasn't very good at first, but now I can fly with my Eris, possibly faster than my Curve at times.

It does seem like the more I use my Eris the more it learns how I type and fixes everything for me.

 

[Podivin]

If you haven't already, run the calibration tool on the keyboard. That allows it to learn the way that YOU press the keys, rather than the way some programmer thought you would.
On the home screen press and hold the menu button until the keyboard pops up (or anywhere there is a keyboard).
Press the 'gear' button on the lower left of the keyboard.
Text Input
Calibration tool.
Type in the sentence it gives you (the ever popular 'quick red fox').
My wife and I both saw an immediate difference in the accuracy of our key presses (or rather, the phones accuracy in determining what key we're trying to press).

Personally, I think the word prediction just gets in the way, so I've turned that off - which is also under the 'gear' settings.

Hope that helps.

 

[thetomlin2]

first thing i type is all the curse words. Nothing like going on a ducking rant and the shot doesn't come out like it dame well should!

+1

Just keep typing ... I hated it for the first couple of weeks and have gotten used to it. No problems now

 

[Frisco]

If you haven't already, run the calibration tool on the keyboard. That allows it to learn the way that YOU press the keys, rather than the way some programmer thought you would.
On the home screen press and hold the menu button until the keyboard pops up (or anywhere there is a keyboard).
Press the 'gear' button on the lower left of the keyboard.
Text Input
Calibration tool.
Type in the sentence it gives you (the ever popular 'quick red fox').
My wife and I both saw an immediate difference in the accuracy of our key presses (or rather, the phones accuracy in determining what key we're trying to press).

Personally, I think the word prediction just gets in the way, so I've turned that off - which is also under the 'gear' settings.

Hope that helps.

Very cool advice, and thanks for taking the trouble to add the all important, "...the phone's accuracy in determining what key we're trying to press." That's a HUGE feature to some of us, as opposed to the device trying to lead the user to the developer's idea of accuracy.