hi there, I've done pocket PC, palm pilot graffiti, palm treo integrated and dockable keyboard, landscape slider keyboards, stylus only qwerty keyboards, Swype the app, Gboard, heliboard, t9 physical keys, messageease, and im sire some others.

day 1 the plb is slower than swipe typing because it needs getting used to. But the trick is one can focus one's attention on the content being typed /learn to touch type on a physical keyboard that on screen keyboards cant do, because of lack of consistency of on screen kbs always shifting layouts on you, at least with coming and going but usually also ruining the dot menu for common punctuation depending on if the input field is trying to be an email or a number or whatever.

dont try to help me keyboard, just give me a ctrl character, consistent shortcuts, and don't lag half the time I enter some text input, so I've typed out 4 words before the phone realizes anything has happened.

so yes i think you are right that swipe typing has value and more people should use it. but its lipstick on a pig for most of osks not being reliably static enough to let muscle memory / touch typing grow.

my unihertz titan 2 also has capacitive keys, i turn them off because I want the kb as dumb as possible (though i add keymapper android app to give me vim style arrow keys), but swipe typing would be possible on my or this device with just software support if there were demand for it / someone got their llm to vibe it up.

Swipe typing is abysmal on iOS. Not sure how it is on Android these days or how much it depends on the device.

Good thing it supports swipe then