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    48 hours of Colemak on a phone

    • Started by Surfer3907
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    • Registered: 20-Oct-2015
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    20-Oct-2015 06:38:30#1 48 hours of Colemak on a phone

    Hi, it's my first post here.

    I'm a 13 year old who recently found out about Colemak, and here were my QWERTY speeds:
    Computer - 85 wpm average, 110 wpm top (Typeracer)
    5" smartphone - 40 wpm average, 55 wpm top because of errors (The Typist app)

    I first saw Colemak when I was looking at an alternative keyboard layout in Fleksy because of my slow mobile typing speeds. As I could not learn Dvorak for some reason, I decided to give Colemak a try because it was QWERTY-like.

    It's been great so far on my phone but it's basically semi-hunt and peck for some characters.
    I did a measly 13-17 wpm on the first day but I am now at 31wpm with Test A. This seems to be very good as I am still using QWERTY on my PC, but I have a question, how long did it take for you to reach ~70-80wpm? I may switch the layout on my PC if I have some free time to learn how to type Colemak fast, but I still need to be able to type reasonably fast in IT class, where we are not allowed to download exe files to convert the keyboard layout. Will switching to Colemak affect my ability to type QWERTY quickly?

    Last edited by Surfer3907 (20-Oct-2015 07:18:18)
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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    20-Oct-2015 09:46:04#2 Re: 48 hours of Colemak on a phone

    For a phone, I'd really recommend the Colemakoid MessagEase layout. See my sig topics.

    Yes, switching to Colemak affects most people's QWERTY skills. This is mainly because you don't feel like using QWERTY anymore. I can still type on QWERTY boards but not without looking down and not nearly as fast as Colemak. I could've maintained a higher QWERTY speed but I don't want to. ;-)

    Last edited by DreymaR (20-Oct-2015 09:47:42)

    *** Learn Colemak in 2–5 steps with Tarmak! ***
    *** Check out my Big Bag of Keyboard Tricks for Win/Linux/TMK... ***

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    20-Oct-2015 11:43:23#3 Re: 48 hours of Colemak on a phone
    Surfer3907 said:

    but I have a question, how long did it take for you to reach ~70-80wpm? I may switch the layout on my PC if I have some free time to learn how to type Colemak fast, but I still need to be able to type reasonably fast in IT class, where we are not allowed to download exe files to convert the keyboard layout. Will switching to Colemak affect my ability to type QWERTY quickly?

    I switched over a year ago and still haven't quite reached 70-80wpm! But then my Qwerty speed was never that fast either.

    For your class perhaps you might be able to run AutoHotKey or Portable Keyboard Layout from a USB drive?  Not ideal I grant you. This is why we really need readily available hardware converters!

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    • Registered: 29-Sep-2015
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    20-Oct-2015 12:04:27#4 Re: 48 hours of Colemak on a phone
    stevep99 said:
    Surfer3907 said:

    but I have a question, how long did it take for you to reach ~70-80wpm? I may switch the layout on my PC if I have some free time to learn how to type Colemak fast, but I still need to be able to type reasonably fast in IT class, where we are not allowed to download exe files to convert the keyboard layout. Will switching to Colemak affect my ability to type QWERTY quickly?

    I switched over a year ago and still haven't quite reached 70-80wpm! But then my Qwerty speed was never that fast either.

    For your class perhaps you might be able to run AutoHotKey or Portable Keyboard Layout from a USB drive?  Not ideal I grant you. This is why we really need readily available hardware converters!

    Portable Keyboard Layout works great as a quick Keyboard emulator for your computer I find.. However.. I have had problems with keyboard emulators working on some programs.. where the keys just fail to work at all inside of those programs.

    Yep.. the layout itself is ideal.. but I find PKL great if the administrators lock you out of getting the layout entirely. If you need it to simply just use something like a Word processor at school, this could work great.

    As for a phone... never really saw the point in using Colemak on it when the main benefits are for a keyboard. I bet there are better optimized layouts for a phone than Colemak.

    Last edited by Protanly (20-Oct-2015 12:08:26)
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