Shanghai Tech WriterTechnical Writing, Technology, Web2.0, Google, Shanghai, China

The other day, I wrote about how easy it was to use Google Pinyin to input Chinese characters on the computer. Originally, I wanted to write a post about how bad the iPhone’s built-in Chinese pinyin input method was but I needed to provide a basis for comparison. So, I wrote a post about using Google Pinyin first and now, I can rant and complain about how bad the pinyin IME on the iPhone is. It’s obvious the pinyin IME either was not designed by a Chinese developer or did not go through usability testing.

The iPhone’s “intelligent pinyin-recognition” system and dictionary database are both very weak. For example, instead of typing out each character’s pinyin at a time, you should be able to type the first letter of each character and be able to input an entire phrase (e.g., ‘nh’ for 你好 and ‘xx’ for 谢谢）. The choices for a phrase should be listed in order of popularity or usage, based on your typing pattern.

iPhone’s pinyin IME does allow you to type the first letter of each character, but the resulting selection is often not what I want. For example, when I type ‘xx’, I expect ‘谢谢’ (thank you) to be among the first few choices of two-word phrases that begin with x, but instead, it’s not even a choice! I have to type ‘xiexie’ to find it! This happens to many phrases that I want to enter, so I end up having to type out the entire pinyin spelling instead of just the first letter of each character in a phrase. This slows down the typing significantly and makes entering Chinese characters a slow and tedious process.

iPhone’s pinyin IME also doesn’t pay attention to your typing pattern at all, so it doesn’t change the order of the resulting phrases accordingly. For example, when I type ‘xx’ using Google Pinyin, 谢谢 appears as choice #1. Choice #2 and #3 are the same as iPhone’s #1 and #2. I don’t remember if 谢谢 was always the first choice for Google Pinyin, but I use this phrase a lot, so Google Pinyin remembers that and changes the order accordingly.

The other problem with entering two-word phrases on the iPhone is that you can’t use a combination of full and incomplete pinyin. For example, while the iPhone can recognize ‘nh’ as 你好, it can’t recognize ‘nhao’. This is particularly annoying because if the iPhone can recognize the first character, I’m unlikely to type out the whole pinyin. I’d go right ahead and type the second character. If it doesn’t recognize the second character by a single letter, I’ll try to type out the whole pinyin for that character. Unfortunately, since it’s still on “intelligent” (or not so intelligent) mode, it’s confused because I have to type either single letter pinyin phrases or full pinyin phrases. (e.g. ‘nh’ or ‘nihao’ but not ‘nhao’ or ‘xxie’). It’s really retarded!

Lastly, Google Pinyin has this fuzzy spelling feature that allows you to configure the “intelligent pinyin-recognition” system to effectively identify the characters/phrases that you meant to spell but don’t know how to spell properly. The Chinese language is complicated and there are many similar sounding words that are spelled slightly different （e.g., ’s’ or ’sh’, ‘z’ or ‘zh’, ‘an’ or ‘ang’, ‘c’ or ‘ch, and so on). Unless you’re a native speaker, chances are you’re going to have difficulty remembering which is which. Even native speakers have difficulty with this! As for me, my family is from Taiwan, so I’m always confused because to the Taiwanese people, they all sound the same!! I know I can’t blame the iPhone for my inability to spell properly, but the lack of this fuzzy spelling feature makes it even more difficult to input Chinese characters on the iPhone. You have to spell out your pinyin perfectly or it won’t show you the right characters. Sucks for me!

Anyway, I don’t like the pinyin IME on the iPhone. I hope Apple will make significant improvements to the usability of the pinyin IME because it really sucks right now. It takes me much longer to type Chinese characters on the iPhone. Even the pinyin IME on my 5-year-old Nokia cell phone works much better!

Meanwhile, I’m looking for a good alternative pinyin IME program for the iPhone. Does anyone have any recommendations?