New Auto Correct
Apple has one of the best approaches to auto correction and text prediction on the market today. I’d argue that its implementation is the one to beat in terms of ease of use for the majority of typing on a touchscreen keyboard. With iOS 4, Apple has mucked with the formula.
Simply updating to iOS 4 seems to cause the autocorrect dictionary to reset. My iPhone 3GS still needs to do a lot of learning as it keeps suggesting/autocorrecting things that I’ve never typed before in my life.
The iPhone’s system works like this: based on the keys you press (and those near the keys), the length of the word you’re typing and the autocorrect dictionary the iPhone will try to figure out what you were trying to type. If the word you type matches a known dictionary word, then nothing happens. If the word you type isn’t in the dictionary then the iPhone will look at the numbers of letters you typed as well as the keys you hit to try and figure out if you accidentally hit the wrong key(s). If it figures out what you did, it’ll use the dictionary to find the word you were likely looking to type and automatically replace the mistyped word. If it guesses incorrectly you have two options. During the guessing process the word the OS is thinking you’re trying to type will appear in a bubble above the word being typed. Tap the bubble to cancel the autocorrect.
Do it enough times and the unknown word gets added to the dictionary. If you type quickly and don’t give the bubble time to appear you can always hit backspace and you’ll get the option to go back to what you typed originally. In iOS3 this replacement was automatic, now you have to select the word you previously typed.
There’s also an expanded form of spell check in iOS 4. If you misspell a word and you don’t allow the single word autocorrect to fix it (or it can’t), the word gets a familiar red underline. Tapping the word will bring up a selection of multiple words that you might have meant instead.
In practice the changes do take some getting used to. It definitely clutters the typing experience with red underlines and word suggestion boxes popping up more than I’m used to. It’s not Android-cluttered but it’s a step away from the super simple iPhone keyboard of before.
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