It would seem that just about everyone who's anyone is lining up to kick the iPhone. A new report from a Chicago-based usability consultancy reckons that texters have a hard time using the phone's new touch screen. 

According to researchers at User Centric, their study found that while overall design and usability of the iPhone was good, the iPhone's touch keyboard was a weak point for many users.

Around 60 users were asked to enter specific text messages and complete several mobile device tasks. Twenty of these participants were iPhone owners who owned their phones for at least one month. Twenty more participants were owners of traditional hard-key QWERTY phones and another twenty were owners of numeric phones who used the "multi-tap" method of text entry.

The results found that when compared to hard-key QWERTY phone owners using their personal phones, iPhone owners' rate of text entry on the iPhone was equally rapid. However, iPhone owners made more errors during text entry and also left significantly more errors in the completed messages.

While iPhone owners made an average of 5.6 errors/message on their own phone, hard-key QWERTY owners made an average of 2.1 errors/message on their own phone. iPhone owners also left an average of 2.6 errors/completed message created on the iPhone compared to an average of 0.8 errors/completed message left by hard-key QWERTY phone owners on their own phone.

The researchers found that when comparing the performance of iPhone owners and non-iPhone owners, there was no significant difference between the number of errors made. iPhone owners were faster than non-iPhone owners, of course.

"Despite the correction features available on the iPhone, this data suggests that people who have owned it for a month are still making about the same number of errors as the day they got it," saidGavin Lew, Managing Director at User Centric.

The research group said that when compared to hard-key QWERTY devices, the iPhone may fall short for consumers who use on their mobile device heavily for email and text messaging.

"The iPhone is a great switch from a numeric phone. But if you're switching from a hard-key QWERTY phone, try the iPhone in the store first," recommended Lew.