Fact · Typing and writing speed
15words per minute
The authors compare their phone data with desktop data gathered by the same method, and find average mobile typing about 15 words per minute slower.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“Average performance is about 15 WPM slower in mobile typing.”
How do People Type on Mobile Devices? Observations from a Study with 37,000 Volunteers, Kseniia Palin et al., Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2019), 2019, Comparison with desktop keyboards (text).
Open the original- What it measures
- The desktop figures come from Dhakal et al. (2018), who used the same transcription task on physical keyboards.
- What it does not show
- Two different samples on two different keyboards, not one group typing on both. The gap is an estimate from the comparison, not a within-person test.