Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem
People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile. I actively avoid having to type anything on mobile. If I have my laptop open, I&#x27;ll use whatsapp or signal on that. I often wait replying on either of those until I get my laptop. Just way less frustrating to not have to correct &gt;25% of my key presses. If I have to use the mobile keyboard, I&#x27;ll often just send a message with typos, no capitals, and skip some of the more redundant words. It seems lots of people do that. Phones just suck for text input. Longform text entering on a phone is by and large not a thing for most people. It&#x27;s mostly a read only device for passively consuming news and media. And taking photos.<p>I find it telling that one of the more popular addons for ipads are covers with a builtin keyboard. It&#x27;s a way bigger device than an iphone. But yet the keyboard sucks enough that Apple sells covers with a keyboard. Of course, all the touchscreen keyboard problems that the ipad has are magnified on their iphone. Yet, they don&#x27;t have a solution for that. And they also sell a stylus for the ipad. Because fingers lack precision. It&#x27;s the same OS but there seem to be no such options for the iphone. Does the stylus even work with an iphone? Is that deliberate? It&#x27;s not like people are going to be magically more precise on an iphone relative to a huge ipad. Conclusion, Apple just accepts that that&#x27;s the way things are. And besides, Steve Jobs would turn in his grave if they dared to ship an iphone with a stylus.<p>Hardware keyboards on phones used to be a thing. I worked at Nokia back in the day. Really nice keyboards. Blackberries were popular too. People wrote lots of stuff on those things. I wouldn&#x27;t mind a little pocket laptop. It&#x27;s not like my pixel 6 is small or subtle in my pocket. It would be more useful with a slide out keyboard.