Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Phone keyboards
Raised as a usability problem by 30 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 29 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Typing on a phone is far slower and inefficientUnreviewed
20122026- Typing long messages on a phone is an awful experience2026-03-11
- Editing and correcting text on a phone is slow, lacks undo and arrow keys, and is frustrating2026-03-11
- Typing long replies and copy-pasting on a phone keyboard is frustrating and error-prone2025-05-16
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 30 complaints
- Typing long messages on a phone is an awful experience2026-03-11
- Editing and correcting text on a phone is slow, lacks undo and arrow keys, and is frustrating2026-03-11
- Degree sign takes several taps through symbol menus to reach2026-02-25
- Friend finds phone keyboard imprecise and must erase and retype every mistyped letter2025-10-06
- Typing long replies and copy-pasting on a phone keyboard is frustrating and error-prone2025-05-16
- Typing symbols on the phone keyboard is a major handicap, making it nearly unusable2024-12-10
- Typing messages on the phone is so hard the commenter avoided it for years2024-04-28
- Keyboard input is harder on touchscreen phones than physical keyboards2023-12-31
- Autocomplete requires extra taps and often picks the wrong, most basic word2022-06-28
- Autocorrect changes words wrongly, forcing the user to fix its mistakes2022-06-06
- Entering large amounts of text on a phone is painful and frustrating2022-02-02
- Text box is so small it scrolls out of view; autocorrect often inserts wrong words2022-01-08
- Typing on a phone is much slower than a full keyboard2021-06-07
- Touchscreen is poor for writing text on a phone2020-12-29
- Phone keyboard keys are millimeters apart, making typing slow2020-09-20
- Adjacent-key typos on Dvorak form valid words, so autocorrect fails to fix them2020-04-20
- Typing on a phone is far slower and feels inefficient2019-05-14
- Suggestions shift while typing, so user inadvertently taps the wrong emoji2019-03-20
- Typing on a phone is so painful the commenter hates every second of it2017-11-17
- Typing a short message by hand on a phone is extremely frustrating2017-11-05
- Typing code symbols and key combos on a phone keyboard is difficult and painful2017-06-11
- Spacebar drag-to-move-cursor area is too small to be useful2016-11-07
- Typing long emails on the phone touchscreen is hard enough to force switching to a laptop2016-10-31
- Typing on phones is much slower and less accurate than on physical keyboards2016-08-16
- Typing search queries on phones is more trouble than it's worth2015-10-20
- Typing on flat phone and tablet keyboards is far slower than physical keyboards2015-05-02
- Alternative layouts don't help thumb typing, and changing the default keyboard forces annoying copy-paste workarounds2014-01-23
- Typing on a phone's virtual keyboard is frustrating and tedious compared to physical keyboards2014-01-11
- Switching keyboard layouts for symbols makes typing complex passwords annoying and error-prone2013-02-01
- Texting on a phone keyboard is too painful to use2012-08-30