Fact · Dictation software
12.7minutes
At the entry speeds in the phone study, typing 1,000 words on the built-in keyboard takes about 12.7 minutes longer than speaking them, before any editing.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
- What it measures
- The speeds come from a study on an iPhone with short English messages. The figure counts only raw entry time, so it is the upper bound of the saving for a draft that needs no correction.
- How it is calculated
- 1,000 / 52 words per minute = 19.2 minutes by keyboard; 1,000 / 153 words per minute = 6.5 minutes by speech; 19.2 - 6.5 = 12.7 minutes
- What it does not show
- The study used short phrases in a quiet setting. Editing dictated text takes time, and the saving shrinks by that amount. The result is an estimate for planning, not a measured saving for your own work.
Calculated from
- In the same controlled study on an iPhone, English text entered on the built-in QWERTY keyboard reached 52 words per minute, against 153 words per minute by speech.
- 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.