iPhone Spell Checking

typing on the iPhone's virtual keyboard kind of works, but it is error-prone and not very fast. and since most applications still do not support rotation (which would be a good way to present a less cramped keyboard layout, as is available for form inputs in safari), most people mistype a lot of characters.

which means that spell checking and error correction potentially is very useful, because it can correct all those mistyped characters, or at least many of them. but given the iPhone's we know what's good for you approach to UI design, there is spell checking, but no control over it.

unfortunately, the spell checking and auto-correction mechanism has a number of built-in assumptions that make it much less useful than it could be:

• capitalization: spell checking ignores capitalization, but auto-corrects it. the english dictionary contains DAs and whenever i type das (which is the german definite article the), which happens very often, the wrong correction is being suggested, and the iPhone never learns that das also is a valid word.
• two- and three-letter words: for some reason the iPhone never learns two- or three-letter words. there are probably too many of them, the designers thought. but that also means that no matter how often you use these words, if they are not in the built-in dictionary, the iPhone will always suggest the wrong auto-correction.
• special characters: for some reason, special characters are not considered relevant. whenever i type im (the german word for at or in the), the iPhone suggests I'm, and it never learns the word.
• optimistic error correction: unless you decline them by tapping them, suggested corrections are always applied. this may be appropriate for very high success rates, but it is not a good strategy when a substantial number of suggestions are wrong. it would be good if auto-correction could be configured to be pessimistic, so that corrections are only applied if i approve them by tapping them.

it would be nice if the spell checking and auto-correction would be a bit more flexible and configurable, which would turn them into something far more useful than they are now. also, because auto-correction is optimistic, the spell checking issues are much more annoying than they would have to be.

the iPhone to-do list now contains an item about these spell checking and correction limitations as well. they would be pretty easy to implement, so maybe at some point in time the iPhone will allow a bit more control over how it handles spell checking.