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“Touch screen” smart phone – Why would you do that to yourself?

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I’ve had to configure several of the new touch screen Blackberrys in the last couple of weeks. Am I the only one too fat-fingered to effectively use this type of interface due to the lack of tactile feedback? I usually mistype at least one letter out of five. Any hints as to how to use one of these more effectively / easily?

I also have a history of problems with touch pads, preferring a traditional mouse whenever possible.

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I’m there with you

In reply to “Touch screen” smart phone – Why would you do that to yourself?

I passed on the iPhone for this very reason. The more I played with it, the more I realized I couldn’t use it effectively, and was more likely to fling it in disgust than I was to master the touch screen.

I can use the HP touchpads ok, but Lenovo and Toshiba touchpads give me fits, for whatever reason.

Perhaps in future iterations they’ll be a better way to reconcile the touch screen performance to the user’s specific finger motions.

No problems

In reply to “Touch screen” smart phone – Why would you do that to yourself?

As you know I have bene a tradesman for years, I don’t have slender fingers, in fact have no feeling at the tips at al now. I use my HTC with VERY little effort, its called a stylus. A small telescopic aluminum stylus, slides into the bottom of the phone, of course i can use a fingertip but that doesn’t help in my case ( I have one finger tip that the touch doesn’t even read from, its dead in the device’s mind I suppose).

But between the slide out QWERTY keyboard and 4 types of input available (ON screen keyboard, transcribe that reads handwriting perfectly, block letter recognition, Letter recognizer) I find input choices are not a worry. I can even scribble a diagram and it will automatically draw a nice lin edrawig of it, and save it as a PDF for sharing. VERY slick and its a few years old now. Not exactly cutting edge, as these others seem to think it is, even when they lag behind.

When will crackberry and iphone ever catch up with those who design really usable devices for business?

Apparently a stylus isn’t an option with this model

In reply to No problems

At least, there isn’t one in the box.

Exactly

In reply to Apparently a stylus isn’t an option with this model

Just as with teh i-Phone, it is touch screen technology that fails. With dozens of different touch screen types available, they seem ot prefer using cheap technology to the more advanced and robust technology.

You go into a bank or betting shop and they use high end touch, you can use anything on it, no matter how dirty or grimy they get and you can clean them with caustic cleaning agents.

YO go to a restaurant and teh touch is a bit cheaper, especially those that just boought what was cheap without fitting it to a restaurant POS need. But even they are, for the most part, worthy and usable screens.

By the time you get into mass produced handhelds, screens cost mone and for a company tryign to put out a device for free or close to free, they aren’t going ot implement worthy touch technology.

Check out the tech available form ELO/Tyco
http://www.elotouch.com/Technologies/

(Yes, okay, I used to sell touch technology and POS solutions too) 🙂

POS systems have much bigger screens.

In reply to Exactly

The technology seems to work fine on this Blackberry, I just can’t hit my targets. Imagine running a POS on a smart phone-sized screen. It’s not that the technology doesn’t work, but it seems to me to be the wrong solution for the application.

Feeling your pain

In reply to “Touch screen” smart phone – Why would you do that to yourself?

If the screen will accept the input, try using a stylus. If it won’t “see” stylus input, try something with a fatter point like the bottom of a pen. You want something that is at least 3/8 to 1/4 inch in diameter. I wrapped a wooden bead in cotton batting then covered it in a piece of panty hose. Stuck the bead onto a length of dowel.

You aren’t the only one. My Touch is nearly useless to me for just that reason. Even with a stylus, it is nearly impossible. *sigh*

I am thinking you are talking

In reply to “Touch screen” smart phone – Why would you do that to yourself?

about the Blackberry Storm, just had the experience of setting one up as well.

Rather difficult, as I was pressed for time I did not have time to do much but setup and deliver. There must be some settings for the sensitivity of the keyboard as I too had a bit of trouble hitting the right keys and menu items.

Ugh.

In reply to “Touch screen” smart phone – Why would you do that to yourself?

I don’t at all like touchpads. Bugs me no end lately that there is no physical button on a lappie to turn it on and off.

Touchpad telephones strike me as a very bad thing for me. My fingerwork is precise enough to grab and squish an asparagus bug, but not to fiddle with those touch screens on cell phones. Ack.

etu

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