I am 33 days into my Droid. Coming from a phone with a different keyboard, I have struggled with this keyboard. I have forced myself to use the qwerty even when it was faster with the onscreen, knowing I would reach a point I would be pretty good at it. I am not yet pretty good at it, but I will be. There is definite improvement. There is some talk also of lag with the qwerty, but I don't have a strong opinion one way or another.

 

Coming from an iPhone, I prefer the on screen keyboard. Sadly I have to use landscape because the keys are so small in portrait.

 

the onscreen keyboard is qwerty...

 

I really like the keyboard and prefer it to the virtual counterpart, and as I stated many times, I came from the all touch Dare.

I couldn't figure out for the life of me why they even bothered w/ a qwerty keyboard in portrait mode. I tried, but just too many errors. Then yesterday while typing what I knew would be a relatively short text I give it a one-thumb whirl. Low and behold, I did it quick and w/ no errors. So I tried it again, and again.

Apparently, portrait mode is def designed for one-thumb typing. Maybe everyone else knew that, but if my fat thumbs could do it quickly and accurately, anyone can learn.

 

I love my hardware keyboard! Its great to have a choice tho.

 

I'm not coming from an iPhone, but I currently am faster on the (landscape) keyboard. That said, I am forcing myself to use the h/w keyboard as often as I can remember to do so after reading a few threads here that said with practice, the h/w keyboard works well. After only 2 days, I already see improvement, but I am still faster w/ onscreen. I honestly think that after forcing myself for another week or 2, I will be just as fast with the h/w keyboard (which I would prefer anyway...)

 

+1... I am faster on it than ANY other keyboard (virtual, desktop, etc...) Way better than my last phone: HTC Touch (stupid stylus)

 

It is likely that once you become proficient with the virtual keyboard it may become faster because you don't have to actually PRESS the button. On the virtual keyboard you need only graze the letter and it shows up on the screen. However, if that were the case, all keyboards everywhere would be capacitive. You can be fast with the physical keyboard; it just requires time too because the buttons don't press like a BB or other raised buttons.

 

I've used many virtual keyboards, including iphone...still faster on the Droids...and faster than desktop keyboards, and I've been using those for many years...I've tried using the virtual kb, but its too sensitive, I keep hitting wrong keys. I'm saying the Droid has the best keyboard but I type fastest on it.

 

I love the predictive text with the onscreen keyboard, but if I make a mistake and have to go back and edit, the D-pad and the physical keyboard are a lifesaver. I find that I use the onscreen keyboard more but they go hand-in-hand.

 

I am faster using the on screen keyboard to all though i have been forcing myself to use the physical keyboard a lot to try get used to it but i can't. the design of this keyboard is terrible. I have tried a TP2 and htc got the keyboard right, way better than the droid keyboard. I think if they would have dropped the D pad and spaced out the keys a little it would be way better. there are already 2 buttons wasted on the droid and they could have easily dropped the d pad and found room for dedicated keys for up,down,left and right buttons that would not take up much more room, just use the 2 wasted buttons and then add 2 more for up and down. Enter key does teh same as the middle d pad button.

 

I keep trying the hardware keyboard but I am way better with the virtual one. I don't see how any one can type faster on the hardware keyboard.

 

Coming from a Blackberry Curve and being able to really cruise on the keyboard I was really disappointed that I was so slow with tons of errors on the physical keyboard. Now I use the virtual and am pretty fast, but not quite to what I did on my Blackberry. Rarely do I bother with the physical keyboard anymore.

 

I've had my Droid since launch day and I'm definitely much faster on the hardware keyboard. Probably has something to do with never having a touch screen phone and the fact that my last two phones were the enV and enV2 and I typed ridiculously fast on them. The Droid's keyboard took a little getting used to, but when I need to type out a fast reply I always slide out the keyboard.

 

I use the onscreen keyboard for short texts, searches and logins, but for anything that is a paragraph or longer, like blogs or craigslist descriptions, I bust out the slide and d-pad. I've gotten pretty good at it, and the screen real estate that the physical keyboard saves allows me to read nearly all of what I've typed so far rather than just half the sentence. It is very nice having the option to do either.