BlackBerry Thumb Touch Typist Guide (Typing 60 WPM without looking!)
The BlackBerry Thumb Touch Typist Guide
(Thumb Typing without looking at keyboard!) How to type 50-60 WPM on BlackBerry in 2 weeks!* (*Assumes you are already a desktop PC keyboard touch typist) Important Note: For full QWERTY BlackBerries ONLY. NOT for 7100 or 8100 Series using SureType. As a deaf user of electronics, keyboards are often the main method of keyboard communication. Some other other BlackBerry elites have mastered this technique, and I am posting the learning techniques for thumb touch typing. Very few thumb keyboards are good enough for thumb touch typing without looking at it, and BlackBerry is one of them. I am now writing one of the world's first Thumb Touch Typist Guide for QWERTY thumb keyboards. But please credit me if you ever use this guide in any press material, or need me to expand this material. (Some of my articles, on other topics, have been published in magazines, and even one new O'Reilly book) This guide was originally designed for full QWERTY thumb keyboards; like BlackBerry 72XX series, rather than SureType on the 71XX series. It will take approximately 1 month for most experienced desktop touchtypists to fully learn thumb touch typing. Some people manage to double their BlackBerry speed once they get familiar with blindly correcting typos, etc. Advantages of Thumb Touch-Typing.
WARNING! Some experts think that the use of any keyboard at all can cause serious injuries. It is your responsibility to take care not to overdo BlackBerry typing, in order to reduce risk of repetitive-strain injury. Make sure you have many breaks in your thumb typing. If you experience any discomfort or pain, stop typing immediately. Quote:
|
THis is a great post and maybe should be made into a sticky
|
Glad you like the post. I have already added this thread to my BlackBerry FAQ. (Instead, I think my BlackBerry FAQ should now be a sticky in General forum now my BlackBerry FAQ is so 'general' -- I'll ask Guess about this sometime)
Do you already thumb touch type? I regularly am able to exceed 50-60 words per minute on BlackBerry. My personal record is 72.4 words per minute (363 keypresses in 60 seconds, no autotext). |
Sometime, I think we need a typing benchmark software program for BlackBerry. Any takers? This could just be a simple midlet.
|
I'd like it, I use typingtest.com at least once a month to evaluate my current speed and build on it. I'd like to master thumb typing myself, maybe get as good as I am on the computer (120cwpm) that'll be some serious speed on the blackberry. I'm down for the midlet
|
What is cwpm? Remember cpm (keypresses per minute) is different from wpm (words per minute) ....
Do you mean 120cpm or 120wpm? 120cpm on a BlackBerry is easy, but 120 words per minute on a thumb keyboard? I think that's impossible.... unless you were the world's fastest thumb touchtypist. I generally am beyond the 99th percentile when it comes to desktop typing at 142 WPM best speed (130 WPM average test) and probably the 95th percentile with BlackBerry speed at 72.4 WPM best speed (60 WPM average test). |
cwpm corrected wpm (after figuring my typos out), roughly 90wpm after correcting typos. 72 on blackberry?! Wow man, I'm lucky right now if I'm pushing out 10 lol.
|
Yep, 72 wpm on a BlackBerry. No AutoText used. That was 363 keypresses per minute, and at 5 keypresses per word, this results in 72.4 WPM. Because there is no typing test software for BlackBerry, I had to do the complicated procedure to benchmark my typing speed.
I just did the test at http://www.typingtest.com again. The typing results should be updated shortly (by about 3:00am GMT). When it does, the 136 Net Speed WPM (cwpm) result in the Weekly top 100 is mine. (98% accuracy, Gross Speed would be 138 WPM) My typing falls down to about 90-100 WPM if I am dong continuous typing of one of my massive posts in my BlackBerry FAQ though, and if I am doing lots of formatting, it falls down even further. Still can output fully formatted and corrected text faster than most people can type raw plain text. |
That's still mad crazy Mark. Nice :)
|
That's insanely fast!! :o
|
Mark, so is that backspace on the 2nd row all the way to the right or the 3rd row all the way to the right? ;) Check your post under that backspace section, buddy.
|
All North American full-thumbboard BlackBerry models 5XXX, 6XXX and 7XXX series, have the backspace key at the end of the second row. (Exception of the 71XX series)
Section number 3 is fully correct in the first place with no modifications needed, but I see your error now in section number 5. It is regarding the Enter keypress. I forgot to change the word "backspace" to the word "Enter" in section number 5. Section number 3 and number 5 are nearly identically worded, section 3 is for the backspace key and section 5 is for the Enter key, but one occurances of the word "Enter" was the word "backspace" by accident. Fixed (one word changed in section #5) |
Oops ;)
|
Re: The Thumb Touch Typist Guide (Typing without looking!)
Quote:
|
Aha. Thanks for the correction. The correct line was supposed to be:
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Which does, indeed, use all 26 letters. The instructions have now been revised. |
Haha!
|
A nice small starter development project would be a BlackBerry typing speed tester that forced the end-user to type 60 seconds worth of Huckleberry Finn or another selected paragraph, in a splitscreen fashion (text to transcribe at the top of the screen, and the actual typing at the bottom of the screen)
|
Damn... I am around 130 wpm on a full size keyboard, but I must be around 15 wpm on my BB 7100r... :P
I'm having a really hard time pressing the "BN" with my big thumbs... |
130 WPM? Damn, that's pretty fast, 99th percentile league, roughly my league.
(My record is 142 WPM for a 1-minute test at www.typingtest.com) I go about 30-40 WPM on a 7100. The trick is to not look at the screen until the end of the sentence, just bang away on the keys and see what happens. However, I am sticking with the 72XX series, since I can go 70 WPM max, and 50 WPM comfortably... |
Hey - why DON'T our BB's have bumps on the F & J keys? Man that would help tremendously!!!
|
That's true. You'll just have to practice homing in the keys, usually by putting your thumbs on top of the shift keys or spacebar, then moving the thumbs upwards from there. Put both thumbs on the spacebar, slide thumbs two key rows up so that your thumbs are on top of G and H ... then spread apart so your thumbs are on F and J.
I've never had a problem homing without looking, but this may be a good training aid. In no time, you'll be aiming directly at the F and J home keys without needing to hunt for the home keys. Another way is that, at first, you can "cheat" temporarily by glancing in order to initially aim the thumbs at the home keys, before you stop looking while typing... |
Jack and kill went up the hull! - Perils of a 7100r user
Mark, great article, now how about one for the new keyboards on the 7100 series? Somedays I wonder what the dictionary is thinking if I rapid type without looking. It may be my fat thumbs hitting the wrong keys, or maybe it really is some bizarre language that RIM has put in to get the last laugh. My wife sure did after I sent her a message while under the influence. I had been out holding that day, but since holding=golfing the message sort of lost it's point. I think the time is ripe for a BB Synonym dictionary based on the various words you can type with the same keys. For example:
skill:skull are:see (this one is annoying!) deaf:dead is:us (another annoying one) art:set for:foe:doe test:tray dog:fog:doh cat:vat:cay How about a contest for the most words created by certain key combinations? The dark side of this list, would be those words which appear to have no meaning and would be questioned on many a scrabble board. It does sort of remind me of the old Newton days. But, I do love my 7100r just the same. :smile: |
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/149)
Hey Mark, Let me first tell you that I am elated at receiving a response and a pm from you. I am posting the text I did yesterday (I'll try). I am quite average (in your comparision) with my typing speed at about 80wpm. I have reached a high of 94wpm on my notebook. But I usually get 75-80 without any problems. I got my BB 8700G about three weeks ago and read this post on thumb typing about two weeks back. I practised and tried to do a crash-course of sorts with typing and got to Step 9-10 in a hurry. This was helped as I was using the Nokia Communicator (though did not use if for e-mail as much). I had a speed of about 25wpm on my BB on the day I read the post and thanks to all the practical advice from you I have managed 48-50 wpm now. Today I recorded 52 wpm which is my highest but get 45 wpm with relative ease. I thank you for all the advice on typing. I must say your post was worth thousands of dollars of training program for me. THANK YOU Mark. Cheers. |
Quote:
I routinely impress people by typing on the blackberry BEHIND my back as a demonstration of my BlackBerry touchtype ability! :) It's much harder than simply learning BlackBerry touchtyping, but that is something to try out... Even though I'm the writer of this FAQ, I'm usually only 95% accurate when I do this (one typo in a sentence). |
I'm learning.. hahah
|
This guide is stinkin' awesome!
It reminds me of my 10th grade computer typing class. w,w,w,w...t,t,t,t...u,u,u,u. Ha :) I usually type over 125wpm on a computer keyboard so I am curious to see how I would do on my 7130c. |
I have now edited this keyboard FAQ to cover the 8700 series, and to make a note to exclude the 8100 series (since that model is SureType too).
There are minor differences in punctuation typing for the 7XXX series versus 87XX, in which the ' apostrophe, the " quote, and the @ at sign are in different locations on the 7XXX series versus 87XX series. I also added a new section, because it is a common typo that causes a BlackBerry typist to pause/stall: Quote:
|
Quote:
You could improvise this guide for SureType BlackBerries, but there are very different instructions for SureType models, and different considerations as well. |
uncapatlizing the first word in each txt message
i just got my new blackberry pearl about 3 weeks ago..i was wondering if there was a setting that allows you to not capatalize the first word in every sentence w/ out doing it manually, and also when you first start the txt message. thanks!
|
Man, I LOVE this manual. I'm trying to start practicing on a regular basis, and from what little I've done, my speed and accuracy have picked way up.
One thing that Mark mentions are the bumps that are on the home keys (f & j) of a PC keyboard. Does anyone know if there's an aftermarket BB keyboard available with this? It would REALLY help (me, at least). |
For me, I can confirm that the BlackBerry Bold is better for thumb touchtyping than Curve is. The keyboard is wider and less likely to hit adjacent keys. Even though it looks similiar to the 8800 keyboard, it feels nothing like the 8800 keyboard in actual thumb-feel.
I can easily hit 60 WPM on the Bold for regular writing with a very low error rate, and I might be hitting 70 WPM in small bursts. |
i have balckberry 8707v i try to change sim cord my other fone sim cord and my blackberry fone is locked how i can open lock please let me know thaks
|
I saw Kim Kardashian looking through somebody elses text while in her own phone. I would like to know how is this done. please...the phone also says something about multiple phone numbers that you can use in your BlackBerry Help! thanks
|
Link to Youtube video of me doing 75 words per minute on BlackBerry Bold:
YouTube - 75 Words Per Minute on BlackBerry! |
WOW! I would not have believed that if I didn't see the video. I can't type that fast on a regular keyboard.
|
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:03 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.