SpeedType

SpeedType is supposed to test your iPhone typing speed. Sounds good in theory… everyone wants to know how fast they can tap out messages on the iPhone, right? Well everyone’s just gonna have to keep waiting because SpeedType is a complete waste of space.

There are so many things wrong with this app that I’m not even sure where to begin…

SpeedType has only one sentence for “testing” your typing speed
Yes, ONE sentence. And after you’ve typed it once, your chances of scoring better the next time you type it (if you even bother) automatically improve just by virtue of learning from repetition.

SpeedType doesn’t employ the built-in keyboard assists that iPhone users are used to
Automatic capitalization of the first letter, auto-insert of a period at the end of a sentence, auto-insert of apostrophes, predictive spellcheck… with these typing refinements even my dog could probably manage 30 wpm. This pointless app makes the assumption that the keyboard is way dumber than it is, and that makes the test completely inaccurate.

SpeedType doesn’t tally your mistakes, it treats them as roadblocks
If you don’t type a character correctly, you don’t type anything at all. The app will simply refuse to let you type anymore until you put in the correct character. Any decent typing test would let you make mistakes so that you can learn from them.

SpeedType doesn’t give you a score until you insert a space after the period at the end of its lone sentence
I finished my “typing test” and was like “ok now wtf do I do”. After tapping around for some clues, I accidentally hit the space bar and was presented with my score.

SpeedType measures your score in “CPM”: characters per minute
Wow, that’s so incredibly valuable. And not what I wanted to know in the first place.

With a few notable exceptions, I generally try to be at least a little sympathetic to free apps for just that reason… because they’re free and beggars usually shouldn’t be choosers. But developers don’t build free apps for the good of humanity - if nothing else, they’re looking to gain credibility and get their name out there as a legitimate contender in the App Store. Even if this is one of those so-called “practice apps” for getting used to the development process it’s just bad bad bad. Sorry DC & Co., but releasing SpeedType in this form was a mistake.

If the itch to test your typing still needs to be scratched, give iphonetypingtest.com a try. It’s not perfect, but it’s miles ahead of SpeedType.