Living in science fiction

[supergee]

I am about to join the 21st century (“dragged kicking and screaming” would be an exaggeration) by getting a smartphone. The part that bothers me is writing messages, as I am clumsy (“dick-fingered,” the Texans say) with hands that have always trembled and age has withered and/or custom staled. (The term I like is claudication, because it is an Anthony Burgess word; no Burgess novel is complete without claudication and apotropaic.) I am told one can get a phone with a stylus, which should help. Suggestions and advice gratefully accepted.

Comments

[arlie]

Some phones have the ability to attach an external keyboard, along with surprisingly small keyboards. A very few have real keyboards. I'm currently using a Gemini, by Planet Computers but can't reccommend it whole heartedly - there have been too many bugs and compatability issues, notably including the phone panicking while I was on a call (several times), to the point where I pretty much demoted it to PDA and use a (free with my job) iPhone as my primary phone. But the physical design is IMNSHO wonderful... no "butt dialing", and the keyboard is arguably better than the ones built into some laptops.

Don't expect anything to be intuitive, and watch out for surprises, like various things known as gestures. It's very easy to have the experience of doing what appears to you to be the same thing 5 times in a row, and having at least 3 different results. When that happens, remember that it's not creeping senility, it's an incredibly dysfunctional user interface.

It's probably worth taking the how-to-use-the-blasted-thing courses from something like the Apple Store, if your choice comes with such. It feels bloody humiliating to need a class in how to use tech, but the UI designers seem to prefer "pretty" to functional and "undiscoverable" to "clear and easy to use". Expect to have to google how to do seemingly basic things. Expect to call people accidentally (even if you aren't literally butt-dialing).

Since your fingers tend towards trembling, you'll find yourself doubleclicking when you mean to click, etc. etc. In the current generation of iPhones, the same physical button either turns off the screen (helping to prevent butt-dialing) OR brings up Siri, depending on how long you press it. Some phones care about the amount of pressure you use when touching them, as well as (almost universally) how long you press/touch for. Some phones have various "accessibility" options, which *might* help work around some of these features. (I don't have trembling, so haven't investigated in detail.)

[autopope]

Seconded on the Gemini; it's very much a public beta release of what I hope will be a brilliant product (the 2nd generation is the Cosmo Communicator, coming in June/July).