Which is literally extremely frequent, since we often need to do stuff on the go. Which is why an article like this is so important -- we should improve, not give up. There's no reason to think text editing on a phone has reached its final form.
In another topic on HN people are discussing how software gets more bloated over time, because throwing more powerful hardware at a problem is easier than optimizing the software.
As mobile devices aren't likely to get much bigger or get equipped with a mouse and keyboard anytime soon -- in other words, we don't seem to have a hw solution -- isn't it the perfect moment to try something novel and different?
Sure, it isn't a given someone will come up with a great, new approach soon enough. Still seems worth it looking at this as an opportunity.
The problems are with editing only -- precise cursor positioning, precise selection, and then access to basic cut/copy/paste/undo operations that doesn't mess everything up.
My hunch is that we need a button on mobile keyboards to switch to a kind of "edit gesture mode". Some kind of swipe area to move the cursor, some kind of swipe area/mode to extend/contract a selection, some method to handle scrolling as necessary, some kind of magnifying zoom to select tiny things like narrow punctuation, and separate larger button areas for cut/copy/paste/undo. Maybe instead of swipes there are gestures in a kind of dedicated trackpad-type area of the screen, I don't know.
But I definitely think there's a ton of area for experimentation that hasn't been explored yet. The hold-spacebar-to-turn-keyboard-into-trackpad-to-move-cursor mode was a first step the iPhone took towards this, but I think it can go 20x further.
I think it's something that only Apple and Google are capable of developing right now though. I don't think there are enough API's exposed for third-party keyboards to directly control things like text selection, zoom, scrolling, cut/copy/paste/undo, and the like.
You weren't kidding about it being small, though—in hindsight the 320 x 480 screen resolution was a bit rough.
Now that 'work from anywhere' seems more prevalent than a decade+ ago, I wonder if such a design could find enough success in today's environment.
Do we though? It is a fair assumption, but I urge you to stop and inspect. We didn't "need" to do most things we do on the go 20 years ago, do we now? If we're being honest, most people using their smartphones on the go are not for critical situations.
