How To Type Blazingly Fast on a BlackBerry 10 Virtual Keyboard: Trust

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The BlackBerry 10 virtual keyboard is new territory for a lot of long time physical qwerty lovers. I was a little hesitant myself to abandon the comfort of the clickity klackity tactile awesomeness that BlackBerry has shaped, improved, and polished over the years.  After seeing the attention to detail and features that were poured into the BB10 keyboard I jumped in with both thumbs and haven’t looked back. I have heard from some friends and other acquaintances that they are having problems adjusting to the new take on a tried and tested classic.

The first advice I give to those trying to adjust from a physical keyboard to the BB10 virtual equivalent is: just trust it. Don’t worry about fixing your mistakes until after typing the entire sentence. 90% of the time the small, and even large errors are corrected to be exactly what you were intending to type. When I hand my Z10 to someone who has never tried it, I open up the Remember app, click on the Add Entry text field and tell them to write a sentence as fast as they can. Most of time I have had to tell them to stop correcting their mistakes and just let their thumbs fly. Everyone I have shown has been very impressed.

In order to get the best auto-correction there are some keyboard settings that I recommend changing.

  • In Settings go to Language and Input. Under Text Input select Automated Assistance
  • Set Auto-Complete to Aggressive
  • Enable all of the other Automated Assistance features (Auto-Correction, Auto-Capitalize, Period Shortcut, Learned Words)

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When I have two thumbs free, typing without swiping the suggested words up has been faster than scanning for the right words I want. When I only have one hand available though, swiping up from keys is definitely better than trying to type one handed.

Now that I have been using the Z10 keyboard for over a month and a half, I can honestly say that I can type just as fast or even faster than I could on my 9900. All because of a little trust.

We have posted tips about the keyboard before. Check them out below:

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