I grew up at the very beginning of phone texting and became an expert. Now, at 36, I'm terrible at it. Is anyone else finding this?

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alt_14@reddit

With the t9 keyboard and squishy Nokia buttons I could 'touch text' without even looking at the screen. Useful for texting under the desk at school. I really miss that.

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Relentless_UK@reddit

I work with some 16-20 year olds, that can touch type on a touch screen phone and it blew my mind.

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DameKumquat@reddit

I'm over 50 and can touch type on a touch screen phone (or could until the latest crappification of Google Keyboard). Long periods of being unable to sit up and thus shedloads of practice.

I was pretty good even with Nokia 3310 texting.

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I'm late 30s and I used to be great at phone keyboard but in the last year or so it will randomly switch modes for a few words where it expects you to drag over the keyboard and it invariably messes it up so badly I've just gotta delete it and start over. Gboard suuuuucks

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Glittering_Vast938@reddit

Yeah my daughter has thumbs like lightening!

I literally cannot use 2 hands to text at all as I’ll drop my phone!

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cbe29@reddit

I still love a phonecall. Texting just doesnt give me the social connection with someone.

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Katodz@reddit

Use SwiftKey keyboard

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AmphibianNo8598@reddit

I don’t know the specifics but there have been articles etc that one of the latest apple updates DID mess up the keyboard and make people make typos more. No idea how to fix it or if they’re going to care to but you’re not going crazy 😭

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PaddedValls@reddit (OP)

Any chance Samuel Sung made the same mistake?

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handtoglandwombat@reddit

If you’re okay with the data harvesting, try using gboard on your Samsung. It’s really good especially if you can get the hang of swipe typing.

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handtoglandwombat@reddit

I’m just gonna go out on a limb and assume you have an iPhone? The iOS keyboard has been languishing in bugs for aaaages. Some have been awaiting a fix for about five years.

I love my iPhone, but the things I miss the most from my Android days are a keyboard that works, a voice assistant that works, and the ability to sideload proper adblocking.

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Overseerer-Vault-101@reddit

Same shoes and I found turning all the bollocks off except spell checker (not auto correct) helped me massively.

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Gold-Mixture-7824@reddit

Yes! I blame it on the phone though because I wasn't half as bad on my old one

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Royal_Scribblz@reddit

I turned all the auto stuff off and have found myself a much better typer. Auto correct made me lazy.

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Carvery@reddit

Autocorrect is thick as shit I swear. And then every now and then it just doesn’t even activate.

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ARobertNotABob@reddit

Do you make a little grunt when you straighten-up after picking stuff off the floor now, too?

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DaveBacon@reddit

Before predictive texting, I was an expert at 6 88 555 8 444 0 8 2 7 texting. It was so much easier to do without looking!

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JasonVoorhees3@reddit

This actually makes me feel so much better, I thought I was the only one who struggled like fuck to text quickly and accurately on a smartphone.

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louiselovatic@reddit

Hold your phone in both hands and type with your thumbs

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Tallman_james420@reddit

I'm now imagining OP, holding a phone in portrait orientation, trying to bash out replies on a tiny keyboard as if it was a laptop.

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dprophet32@reddit

Oh yes. Increased keyboard size and I constantly have to go back to correct things and that often includes autocorrect messing up

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InspiringGecko@reddit

I type so fast on a computer keyboard that I find texting to be excruciating.

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Feema13@reddit

I was always an early adopter, I was always cool. I could slide my finger around in that cool texty t9 way back in 2005. I was as fast as lightning. People would watch in awe.

Now, I’m 47 and this message has taken me hours to write, this is the 7th draft. Early this morning I called 3 different people from my pocket on a range of different apps. They all thought someone must have died. I’m boomerising in real time. It’s horrendous.

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ASY_Freddy@reddit

you simply can't beat a pysical keyboard for typing - I think the blackberry bold or spv m3100 were the best phones I ever had for typing on.

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Sure-Recognition-262@reddit

My wife had a Sony Xperia Mini Pro - you could turn it landscape and slide the screen upwards to reveal a physical qwerty keyboard underneath. Bloody excellent idea that I wish someone would revisit with modern tech (and a decent sized screen).

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xwell320@reddit

Touchscreen keyboards are horrible for texting, always have been inferior to the old 'T9' style.

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WinglyBap@reddit

Are there T9 software keyboards for smartphones?

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himit@reddit

I use something called messagease. it's not t9 & you need a game to learn the keys but I'm like 50wpm on it

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lucyuktv@reddit

The physical keys were why they worked. Software can’t fix this.

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becooldocrime@reddit

Haptic feedback and layout simply cannot compete.

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Mr_Ham_Man80@reddit

I could type pretty quickly on the old Nokias pre-predictive text and even turned it off when got ones that had it. Wasn't too bad with my Samsung Galaxy S3 but jumped up to an S24 and am constantly having to correct what I've written.

Whilst I could assume it's just me getting older, the change between S3 and S24 happened with the purchase. Not sure what's happened because a bigger screen should theoretically be easier but I'm frequently hitting the wrong letters.

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Peppy_Tomato@reddit

Whenever I expect to engage in a long conversation by chat, I quietly make my way to my PC where I can use whatsapp web and the benefit of a full-sized mechanical keyboard.

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Weary_Bat2456@reddit

I'm early 20s and literally same. I personally hate texting on my phone and much rather use a computer keyboard, although that's probably because of what I've been used to growing up

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carguy143@reddit

Haptic feedback makes typing on a touch screen so much easier to do.

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NagromNitsuj@reddit

These shitty smart phones are a massive downgrade. That is what is happening.

I could pocket type a message on a nokia 5110. No problem. Now the auto correct makes me look ike I'm having a seizure.

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lucyuktv@reddit

I don’t mind making mistakes but I often see that I’ve typed correctly and Apple changes it to incorrect spelling or word. If I ever meet Tim Apple I plan to discuss this at length!

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Evening-Web-3038@reddit

It'll be your back that goes next. Then your hips.

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Sad-Insurance1313@reddit

Have you checked that your arms haven't shrunk & your thumbs haven't grown?

I found that print was getting smaller on everything & I kept making huge texting mistakes. I'd go to type "mistakes" & would type nuftqktws instead

Someone told me Boots could help with my arm & thumb worries??

Was sceptical, but went to see the nice lady in the bit at the back of the shop anyway. In a surprising move, she gave me some glasses & my problems in this arena DID actually go away! Success!

Sucks to get older, eh? Oh & just so you know, people will most likely start talking too quietly soon & electronics just won't go as loud as they did....hugely annoying....

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ChemicalLou@reddit

I recently identified a sad feeling I was having, and realised it was triggered by needing to text or email something detailed from my phone. My thumbs are fucking huge and every fucking words is two letters forward and three back to correct. Onscreen keyboards seem to have got worse. I’m sure there used to be a calibration session when you first got a new iphone. How can i improve the keyboard on my iPhone is there a hack or an app?

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snapper1971@reddit

I use a full qwerty keyboard on a smartphone and try not use the autocorrect feature on it because it's often incorrect and the stored vocabulary is somewhat lacking. Much, much easier than the old way to doing it.

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notfromanywhere234@reddit

Don't forget that we were using very different, prehistoric phone keypads in the past. I have been a texting machine back in the day as well, but my speed dropped significantly after I switched to a "proper smartphone".

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MissionLet7301@reddit

I've never recovered my T9 speed on smartphone keyboards, used to be able to type pretty quick with my phone still in my pocket too

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hyperdistortion@reddit

So it’s not just you having issues with typing on phones in the past year or so!

I’ve seen a bunch of things about this, all to the tune of “iPhone and Android predictive text is going backwards.” For whatever reason, the prediction models are getting worse, after years of being good and getting better.

A few things I’ve read put the blame on use of AI, although I’ve not seen or read enough personally to label that as the problem for either OS.

At any rate, typing in a phone keyboard has always been a worse experience for me than using the old T9 style. Being able to tell what physical button my finger was on, and knowing how many presses for each letter, made for a wonderfully quick typing experience.

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What's happening to me?

The difference between a physical T9 keyboard and an on-screen QWERTY keyboard, I guess.

Weird that it only just started being an issue though tbh.

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