Fact · Typing and writing speed
4.7seconds
At 153 words per minute, 60 characters (12 words of five characters) take about 4.7 seconds to speak on a phone.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
- What it measures
- Time to speak 60 characters at the phone study's English speech entry rate, with five characters per word.
- How it is calculated
- 60 characters / 5 = 12 words; 12 / 153 words per minute x 60 seconds = 4.71 seconds
- What it does not show
- Speech speed here is the phone study's entry rate, which includes correcting errors.
Calculated from
- In a controlled study on an iPhone, English text entered by speech reached 153 words per minute, against 52 words per minute on the built-in keyboard, 2.93 times faster.
- The blind-user study defines words per minute by counting five characters as one word, which is the convention used for typing speeds in this guide.