One of the biggest challenges I faced recently with technology was when I moved from my beloved Black-Berry to the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. There was no tactile keyboard.
I think everyone who has a BlackBerry will agree it has the best keyboard of any phone on the market. Too bad keyboards are going away right before our eyes. I could literally type messages while holding my BlackBerry under the boardroom table and get feedback from colleagues without anyone knowing.
Sadly, for me, those days are gone. For two months I carried both phones – the BlackBerry for sending messages and the Galaxy S for reading them, web surfing and doing all the other things these phones are great at. Keyboards are not one of them.
I finally had to go cold turkey and take the battery out of my Bold 9700 and stick it in a desk drawer. I’ll admit I felt a little guilty doing that but it was the only humane way to go. Having two phones was driving me crazy!
The iPhone really started this craze and I avoided the iPhone for this reason. My fingers were too fat or I was too unco-ordinated to type anything understandable.
I missed that little “click” that meant I actually pushed the key and always knew what letter I was typing. Not so with the touch screen smartphones. For the first two weeks of Berry withdrawal, it was taking me three times longer at least to tap out a message. Part of the problem, of course, is auto correct.
I know this has happened to everyone at least once. You meant to type “I live in a house with my sister” and before you can double check, you send “I live in a house with Hitler.” It usually isn’t a nice word that auto correct spits out for some reason, but often offensive combinations of dirty words or body parts.
One of the best sites for auto correct fails, as they are known, is damnyouautocorrect.com. Be warned, however, some are a little racy, but they have been featured on Ellen.
Auto correct first appeared in Microsoft Word and had the best of intentions. It’s usually packaged in with the spell checker and allows you to edit the auto correct list if you choose. With a keyboard and monitor, this is a very helpful tool.
On a phone it can be disastrous. For example, if someone gets hold of your smartphone and edits the auto correct list, every time you type “lunch” it replaces it with “diarrhea.” You definitely don’t want to get a lunch invitation from that person!
In closing, I would like to sandwich and have ninja’s dictate the toasty raspberry.
