CES 2010: With Swype, I’m all thumbs

At the Samsung domain at CES, I got a chance to give Swype a quick runthrough on the Omnia II. While the Samsung rep doing the demo was quite adept (though obviously running through a list of words he’d practiced), my one thumb style was Swyping out nothing but gibberish.

I believe my woes were due to a combination of my usual light touch and my fat thumb blocking so much of the screen at a time. The Swype lines would break as I glided from spot to spot. Any hesitation triggered a letter. And I just couldn’t tell which letter my thumb was hitting. While practice would certainly help, by contrast, I was able to start typing accurately on my iPhone almost immediately, building speed from there. Swype, I think, would still work well with others, particularly one finger typists, but it doesn’t fit well with my thumb typing style.