Agreed. Often typing out URL is just faster, but it depends on the URL. Also it depends on the situation and how good you are at it. In example to use the camera, I just hit one app and hold it to scan in a second. Compare this to click browser app, new tab, click url area and start typing. Maybe you make a typo or you did not, but read carefully three times so you don’t land on a wrong site. Maybe its cold days and you don’t like typing right now. Also helpful for people who have difficulties in typing for whatever reason. But if you were already holding the phone with the browser, then its less of a deal.

Also there is this surprise effect (as you already mentioned), which makes people curious too. It has error correction as well. So if there is a missing dot in the “i”, then you don’t need to try lowercase L or whatever.