iPhone gripe: show me lower-case letters

October 29, 2009 / Filed under: iPhone, Usability, Rants

One thing I do not get about the iPhone touch-screen keyboard is that it always shows upper-case letters, even when I do not have caps-lock pressed:

Screenshot of iPhone keyboard

Why not show me lower-case letters when caps-lock is off?

This is not a major deal, but sometimes I want to see what the lower-case letter looks like, while considering things like aesthetics and legibility.

Comments/Mentions

# Kevin Keating at 10/29/2009 10:02 am cst

That's an interesting note, Matt. Don't all keyboards show just uppercase letters?

Still, since the iPhone's keyboard is software based, it's totally possible to switch back and forth.

I wonder how it'd impact usability and typing-speed to have the letters change back and forth.

Caps-lock functions like more like Shift in that it's only active for one character (though I think there's a setting somewhere for that). And even if you don't use caps-lock, the letter immediately following punctuation is auto-capitalized. In this case, would you have the keyboard switch only to switch back immediately after the character is tapped?

# Matt at 10/29/2009 11:56 am cst

Haha, yeah. I didn't even think of that stuff. Good points. It would probably be really confusing if it kept switching from lower to upper case, and vice-versa, while typing.

But still, sometimes I just want to "see" the lower case character, you know? Even though I know what it looks like (I have a mental image of it), it reinforces it to see it.