35m ago edit: Apple uses many predictive systems for typing. My sentiment in pointing out just slide to type might be misguided as it does not exist in a vacuum. I'd love to see these tests redone with slide to type disabled. I'm leaving the original comment below for reference.
Slide to type. This "issue" is at most 6 years old for iOS users.
Turn off slide to type if you do not use it. Slide to type does key resizing logic. This is the direct cause of this issue. Please upvote this comment for visibility.
Please reply if you think I'm wrong. I see this get posted frequently enough I'm actually losing it.
I'm on an iPhone 12 Mini and always thought this issue was because it's kind of old. But I've seen this issue for at least 3 major iOS generations now, and I'm currently on 26.X
I'll give this a try. My typing is better when I use slide to type but I'm still super uncomfortable with it (I feel anxious trying to think of the letters "fast enough" even though I know it doesn't matter).
FWIW I've felt my phone typing accuracy has gotten worse every single year for, whatever, almost 20 years now. That's not the case on the computer.
I almost exclusively use slide to type and what I do is not think about the letters, but about the motions I would have done if I was typing with my hands on a regular keyboard, sort of letting muscle memory take over and create the correct “shape” of the word without thinking too hard about it.
I remember when Swiftkey first launched on Android, the swipe-to-text was extremely good and the built-in "learning by itself" dictionary worked well too. Of course, it seems like Microsoft at one point bought it, so I don't even have to try it again to understand the current state of it.
I thought I had a neurological disorder. (My iphone has auto-everything off. I'm not enabling slide type for fun, but I do not exclude the probability ios auto-enabled it when I changed brightness or something, as they are used to do.)
About two years ago, my phone typing suddenly gets extremely bad. Like, from occasional error to about one typo every second sentence. No matter how carefully I type. Hardware didn't change, so it must be me, right?
Let me play with that setting, I hope you are right.
It might be different with slide-to-type enabled, but the iPhone always invisibly resizes keys hitboxes using predictions about what key you want to use next. This can't be disabled, and has been part of the iPhone since the very first. It's a really abysmal experience for something that's so crucial to a smartphone, Apple seems to be completely disconnected with how people use these.
Apple even used to advertise this on their own site. That video definitely exists somewhere on YouTube.
> the iPhone always invisibly resizes keys hitboxes using predictions about what key you want to use next. This can't be disabled, and has been part of the iPhone since the very first.
Yes. True.
> It's a really abysmal experience for something that's so crucial to a smartphone
Full disagreement here. I expect and enjoy the predictive hitboxes, and this issue I am experiencing is not about those. It is when I type for example the letter "T" and I am certain I touched correctly and I am certain I _actually saw_ the letter "T" appear as pressed from the UI, yet when I look at the word I just typed something else which was obviously not the "T" appeared.
This already happened when they got rid of the 5-star rating in favor of the like button. "Rate 5 stars and subscribe" became "Like and subscribe". People will adapt.
Slide to type. This "issue" is at most 6 years old for iOS users.
Turn off slide to type if you do not use it. Slide to type does key resizing logic. This is the direct cause of this issue. Please upvote this comment for visibility.
Please reply if you think I'm wrong. I see this get posted frequently enough I'm actually losing it.
Please refer to https://youtu.be/hksVvXONrIo?si=XD7AKa8gTl85_rJ6&t=72 (timestamp 1:12) to see that slide to type is enabled.