I’ve had my iPhone for about two years now, and although I am extremely happy with the device overall, there are still some features and behaviors that bother me. One in particular: the spelling suggestions that pop up when you’re composing on the iPhone.
The default behavior is to show one (not several, but one) suggestion when the iPhone doesn’t understand what you’ve typed (or understands it to be a typo), which I guess is acceptable. Another default behavior – and where I feel the iPhone falls down hard – is that the suggestion is used by default unless you actively dismiss it. If you’re typing quickly, it’s very easy to miss some of these suggestion pop-ups, which aren’t always correct. In fact, some suggestions are downright wrong, like always prompting you to change “its” to “it’s” regardless of context.
A better behavior, and one I’d like to see Apple adopt, is a tap to accept suggestion feature. That is, instead of tap the suggestion to dismiss it, tap it to acknowledge it (”why yes, iPhone, that’s what I meant”). I’d much rather have iPhone’s suggestions be just that: suggestions. No, Apple, you’re not always right.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, so you want it to work like an Android
(Actually, I just have to tap SPACE for it to accept the suggested word.)
Wow, thanks for giving me the final, deciding factor in the decision between an Android and an iPhone!
Oh, iPhone accepts its own suggestion once I hit SPACE after the word. The problem is when the suggestion is WRONG.
I think that’s the auto-complete function. My android phone came with it turned “on” by default. After experiencing exactly what you’ve described here, I promptly disabled it! I also installed the Better Keyboard app to get a larger keyboard with more options. Worth the 3 bucks for sure.