Some overseas boffins have come up with a new way of punching text into a mobile phone, though I’m not sure I like it. This YouTube video shows examples of how they propose to deal with the typing into a phone keypad in a QWERTY-like manner.
I can’t see it catching on, and I really can’t see companies like Nokia adopting something like this either. I think it’d be a bit of a mind-job to learn, and not particularly intuitive as it almost requires you to know the QWERTY keyboard layout before you can type. Let’s face it, the average Joe isn’t going to be learning the QWERTY layout just so he can type into his phone. It’s a neat idea, but I think it’ll become vapour.
It’s good to see that there are people out there still trying to find new and interesting ways for us to interact with technology, and I’m still hoping that someone will find something a replacement for this bloody keyboard very soon.
“Computer? Hello, computer?”
“Just use the keyboard.”
“A keyboard? How quaint!”
November 15, 2006
“Voice activated! Mmm, how exciting… Hello Computer! Hello! Hello!!”
November 16, 2006
I’m not sure on your point of the average joe having to learn Querty being a bad thing. I would think most people are familiar with it (in first world countries) anyway.
Learning to text on a numeric layout is a complete PITA, especially since the different phone manufacturers can’t agree on a standard for which key is space, which symbols you can type without going to a menu, toggling capitals, toggling predictive text, etc. My phone is a SonyEricsson and I find my girlfriend’s Nokia next to impossible to text on when I ever borrow it. That youtube vid just seems even less intuitive to me.
Voice activation would be nice, but I’ve never seen an implementation that works flawlessy.