Fact · Typing and writing speed
32.2words per minute
In the Palin study, people who reported gesture (swipe) typing averaged 32.2 words per minute overall, against 34.8 for people who used no intelligent text entry feature.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“none 34.8 (12.6) 2.3 1.2 42.6 (14.7) 2.2 1.2 P 32.8 (12.1) 2.3 1.2 35.4 (15.1) 2.2 1.1 A 43.4 (14.4) 2.4 1.2 46.1 (14.4) 2.3 1.2 G 32.2 (13.4)”
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, Table 5.
Open the original- What it measures
- Table 5 gives each combination of prediction (P), autocorrection (A) and gesture (G) use. The gesture-only row is shown here.
- What it does not show
- Self-reported use, not an experiment. In the U.S. subsample the gesture group averaged 38.8 WPM, against 42.6 for the no-feature group.