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Alphanumeric Phone Keypad - Fastap

Posted by michael on from the beep-beep-boop-beep-boop dept.

seldo writes "The illustrious BBC has a story about a new mobile phone keypad, designed by a company called Digit Wireless, headed by one Mr David Levy, who "was head of ergonomic design at Apple for five years and was influential in the layout of its Powerbook laptops," according to the article. I don't know how it is to use, but it looks really funky. There's a demo on the site (javascript popup, so no link). The sooner I don't have to deal with the stupid 3-letters-per-button interface to send SMS, the better."

6 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. how is this news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    this kind of keypad has been out for months. this is news?

  2. Good idea, only one problem... by donnacha · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is a great idea, I can really see it working BUT the method of entering numbers does sound a tad dodgy:

    "Numbers are typed by pressing the four letter keys surrounding each numeral."

    Surely sensing pressure centred on the actual number buttons themselves would make more sense?

    Otherwise, though, great idea, even beats the Treo.

    1. Re:Good idea, only one problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      i think they meant your fingers will touch the surrounding 4 keys, but you still do press the actual number button

  3. What market? by Observer · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Interesting approach, though I wonder what market is being addressed. The biggest casual users of text messaging these days are young people and for them a few mispellings will be understood from the context, plus as another commenter has noted more recent phones have built-in dictionaries to speed up message composition (though I've found these more a hindrance than a help - my language style perhaps).

    If you're interested in using a mobile messagingto to actually do significant work, where a mistake can cost time, money, inconvenience, hurt feelings, etc, then I suspect you'd prefer to use something PDA-sized which either has room for a real keyboard or allows you to use a stylus & touchscreen to tap out a message.

  4. Slow off the mark? by Just_Tom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Geeks who are still using so-called "multi-tap" input should be ashamed of themselves. Dictionary based methods, T9 (from Tegic/AOL), and iTap (Motorola's equivalent) have been standard on phones for a couple of years now, even if they do have their short-comings.

    If you're not into the legacy layout* you could go with MessagEase or this new thing, but the smart money is on a company called Eatoni, since they have two products (LetterWise and WordWise) which they back up with a big stack of research. There's also Zi Corp. who make eZiText and eZiTap for SMS input.

    If you're interested in the HCI aspect of all this you could do worse than looking at the work of I Scott Mackenzie, Poika Isokoski or Mark Dunlop.

    * 1-800-GOFEDEX anyone? Probably explains why Europe is ahead of the US in this field. That and our ridiculous txt addctn...

  5. the QWERTY story by Mikoca · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For those who don't like the alphabetical layout here, think about where QWERTY came from and that this is supposed to replace cell phone keyboards which are already alphabetical, and not computer keyboards.