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New Cell Phone Typing Solution
merlin_jim writes "Found this article on MSNBC about a new Cell Phone typing solution. It uses silicon sensors that can recognize the "shape" of each finger. The meaning of each key changes depending on which finger you use to press it; index finger for A, middle finger for B, etc. Unused finger/key combinations can be assigned to functions like ring volume." Watch out for those pop-up advertisements on your way into MSNBC. This is an idea I never really thought about for single handed typing input. A very cool idea.
Is the backside of almost all cell phones is wasted space. Put a small keypad with a slip cover over it and give the user a stylus to type with. For that matter, put a one or two line LCD display there so you can see just the last word or words typed.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Another use of the technology would be for video game controllers. Instead of placing multiple buttons on a controller (Sony's controller for the PlayStation 2 has eight buttons, not even counting the four direction buttons and the start and select buttons), a single button or a few buttons could be used for all the functions, with each finger denoting a particular action.
This would mean a fundamental change to gaming interaction. Instead of training our hands/fingers to move according to a certain button pattern on an input device, we would need to train our hands/fingers to react in different combinations.
Take a simple example: Imagine you are sitting in a completely closed off room (some isolated test environment) and you are told that you need to press buttons (provided in the room) to get food and water. So you learn to press this button over here to get food and that button over there to get water, and so on. Now, the test environment changes and removes the buttons from your little room. Now, you must learn to perform certain actions to get food and water like raising your right hand for food and raising your left hand for water.
Would this change of approach be benificial to gaming?
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
I can't see this being easier to use than the dictionary idea employed on Nokia phones (and probably others too). It gets you one push on each key and you can do it with your thumb. The newish Nokia 3330 even has multiple dictionaries so you can SMS in different languages. Admitadly it is a little clumsy when it doesn't know the word you're after, but once you've taught it your friends' names, you don't run into this too often.
It hurts my hand to type this way.
I will type k with both hands - try it yourself
kkkkkkkkkk
Unlike keyboard typing, you MUST move your hand to do it, and if you do not you will hurt your hand. Also, you may need to hold the phone with one hand and use the other to make a message.
Why not have shifts/control buttons on the back of the phone where one's hand would normally be, so that you could get the same effect by pressing with one of the four fingers holding the phone, while still only needing the thumb to type with?
-Ben
This won't catch on, and it would not work one-handed. You would have to place it on a surface of some kind to be able to press the keys with your fingers (I don't know about you guys, but when I'm typing on a cell phone, I use my THUMB), or be held with the other hand.
It also does not work with hunting-and-pecking, so, like just about every ass-headed typing scheme that has come along and failed to even make a DENT in qwerty (except maybe Dvorak, and some other keyboard layouts), it doesn't really have a learning CURVE so much as a BRICK FUCKING WALL you would have to vertically climb before the thing becomes even remotely useful.
I don't know why nobody posted this before (or why it didn't get modded up), but on my Nokia 8260, and on my old Samsung SCH8580 there is a built-in dictionary.
The way it works is quite simple, if you try to type the word "message" all you have to do is press 6377243, and it automatically guesses the match, in this case the word "message". If there are more than one match, all it takes is pressing a button multiple times, to scroll through the list of matches. It has English, French and I believe Spanish (my phone is my coat pocket, and I don't feel like getting it).
I've been using my Nokia for quite a while with this system, and honestly I don't need anyting else. It's almost perfect, and the only difficulty is when you want to insert names, or numbers, but that only requires a couple of extra key presses.
So my question is why bother with weird finger press combinations, finger-sensing buttons when the best solution is already out there?!? I guess this is one way somebody is trying to make extra money on royalties, but I don't know...