I have been using  Windows Phone 7 for many months now. In my opinion, the OS is stable. Microsoft is doing a good job to maintain the stability. However, it seems that it is at the expense of functionality. WP7 is missing a lot of functions/features that other OSes are enjoying. But a recent article by Microsoft Research has made me take a good look at the WP7 keyboard.

I have to admit that I am quite impressed with the Windows Phone 7 keyboard. It is very functional as compared to Windows Mobile 6.5. And I always feel that it is intuitive to correct the wrong words. In my initial use, I enjoyed playing the game Text Text Revolution (free from Marketplace). Now, I realized that this game is actually a data collection for Microsoft research team to understand how people type the words.

From their blog, they mentioned that the game has collected more than 20 million touch points for training. If you have played the game before, you will wonder why sometimes when the words came up, and you type the wrong words (but near the correct words), it is consider correct.

After reading their blog post, I now understand that this is how Microsoft wants to train you to become fast in typing and not to worry about the mistakes as they will be corrected automatically. Trust me, they do and I am gaining confidence on my keyboard everyday.

Click Here to Read About the Keyboard from the Research Team

So, what other Tips can be found on the keyboard.

1. Type fast and trust the keyboard to correct you.
2. Double-tap Space at the end of a sentence to add a period and capitalize the start of the next sentence.
3. Tap & hold various keys to reveal hidden menus. The period key is especially handy.
4. Boost your speed: Tap the Shift or Numbers/Symbols key, slide your finger to the character you want, and then release. Saves you a tap.
5. In the suggestion bar, tap “+” to teach the phone a new word (If you have typed a word that your phone do not recognize, tap on the word, it will be “blocked” and you can see the “+” sign on the suggestion bar).
6. To undo auto-correction: tap the word, then tap the first candidate (the original word) in the suggestion bar.
7. Multilingual? Go to Settings>Keyboard to select other keyboard languages.
8. Or Select the key next o the “space” and it will show the languages it can support.
9. Tap and Hold the “Shift” key to lock it.
10. If you see the “–>” key (see below picture), press it and you can another page of the keyboard.
11. When you see a “.com” key, press and hold to bring out the common extension. Dependent on the keyboard that you have.
12. If you want to place your cursor in the middle of some text you’ve already written, tap and hold the screen near the text you want to change until a cursor appears, then drag your finger to move the cursor exactly where you want it.
13. When you want to retract the keyboard, press the “back” button and the keyboard will retract.
14. If you only need to add one symbol or number, Tap and hold the Numbers and symbols key. Keep your finger on the screen, then move your finger to the number or symbol you want to add. Take your finger off the screen to type that character.

That is it. 10 tips and I am sure there are more. Let me know if you find out more.

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