Ask HN: Why has typing on a phone not improved in ~20 years?

13 hours ago

Typing on an iPhone today is just as error-prone as it was when the phone launched in 2007.

Next token predictors have largely solved this for day-to-day use.

Swipe + a more modern prediction model would mean we'd be able to type one-handed without looking at the screen at all, and have perfect accuracy.

We have the tech today. For whatever reason, nobody is using it. Why?

10 comments

mvkel

Reply
runjake  6 hours ago

iOS already has swipe entry by default. I use it for most of my text entry. It is wonderful.

For me, typing on an iPhone worked well until iOS 26. Now I get jumbled AutoCorrect which acts like it's LLM-driven.

When I turn off Apple Intelligence on iOS 26, I get the old, properly-functioning AutoCorrect back. So that's a potential workaround.

  • mvkel  5 hours ago

    In my experience it is not so good that you could happily swipe away without needing to review the generated text. For example, sliding to type "rife" autocorrects to "ride," despite the context of the sentence making "rife" the only possible word.

    That context tech is here in LLMs.

JohnFen  13 hours ago

I just want physical keyboards back.

  • Moomoomoo309  1 hour ago

    One just came out. Only one on the market I know of. It's called the Unihertz Titan 2, and I'm typing this comment on one. It's got a blackberry style keyboard and runs pretty close to stock android. I recommend swapping their default keyboard out with swiftkey, though the default one isn't terrible - swiftkey just gives me a few conveniences like emoji suggestions. It has play services, so it works.

  • kristianp  5 hours ago

    This. Much of my typing speed and accuracy comes from feeling the positions of the keys. I can't do that on a touchscreen phone. They are so error prone and frustrating. Autocorrect is almost useless.

k310  13 hours ago

Do you want neuralink? I really don't like the invasive aspect of it.

I turned off all assists to typing on this iPhone. They kept giving me maddening substitites for my words.

Going to fire up the computer now. The one with the giant lighted keyboard. And the FORWARD DELETE KEY, the single greatest efficiency booster since the invention of the "vi" editor. The "dot" command alone has saved years of work (slight hyperbole there)

And no AI. EVER. I speak for myself. Otherwise no point in living.

Note to Apple: why can't I get a lighted keyboard from you for any amount of money, unless I buy a laptop, where it drains battery, rather than the power grid?