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(Yet Another) Mobile Keypad
A reader wrote to us about Intel's newly unveiled mobile keypad, which, all things considered, doesn't look nearly as terrible as most mobile keypads. Still not exactly stirring, but not too bad either. Of course, there's getting it into production, licensing etc etc
I haven't used text on my phone enough for the text entry method (typing each number up to four times) to be a hassle.
What I DO use my phone for, however, is dialing numbers. And if I have to have to press FOUR buttons to enter ONE number, then this keyboard would create more problems than it would solve for me.
Just my two pence.
William
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
The future lies with Hand-writing recognition and good high resolution screens. We have used to pen for well over 2000 years and it is both comfortable, easy to understand and use and fits the requirements of being small and usable on the train/bus/airplane.
Yes it is possible to shrink a keyboard down to the size of a pin-head but our fingers are not getting any smaller...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
Most people have typos with regular keyboards. I doubt anyone is going to have the dexterity to not hit those letter keys while meaning to just use the numeric part of the keypad.
Too obvious! This is a "why didn't I think of that five years ago" moment.
Mobile input is THE barrier to true interactive use of wireless data. I could see a keypad like this speeding up my mobile text input by at least four to five times, yet still non-clunky enough to fit in a flip-phone.
...
Plain alphabetical order is better than a poorly designed layout that sticks around because most people are afraid of change.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
why is it that with this generation's phones, I can record a simple clip to voice-activate dialing a particular number, but i can't enter a voice-activated dialing mode where i speak the numbers to the phone? (eg. "dial: 8, 6, 7, 5, 3, 0, 9" )
once you do that, we won't need tacticle buttons for no-look dialing; removing their last advantage over touch-pad dialing.
and once we're doing touch-pad interfaces - then we're free to do a -good- interface. such as tossing in a stylus and doing handwriting->text conversion a la tabletPC. (writing will always be faster/easier/more accessible than thumb tapping.)
come to think of it, writing phone numbers to dial/store them would completely remove the necessity to even emulate a traditional dialing pad. now we're talking convergence device...
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
After taking another look at the keyboard, I have to point out the obvious design flaw... No QWERTY.
This is the standard we are all use to -- how can a keyboard be successful without it.
Ah now I know why.... in your picture the phenomenal ugliness of the keypad is much too obvious
I may be being a bit of a luddite over this but predictive text works well once you get used to it. If Symbian/Nokia/Whovever could just get it sorted so it remembered what words you used the most it would be even better.
This just seems really fiddly and you will have to spend the first couple of months working out where all the keys are. It may be OK for some people but can't see myself using it.
in voice recognition. Some mobiles recognize certain spoken words - as evidenced by the amusing sight of a colleague yelling 'home!' into his phone when trying to ring his wife. But what if one day we could have a phone that could actually recognize what people say and translate it into text? And then perhaps translate the text back into synthesised speech at the other end. Some day, maybe this could be done real time so that people could use these 'mobiles' to communicate instantaneously. Er.. hang on a minute...
I've always wondered about touch screen pads. Why can't you have a phone that is the same form factor but is essentially just a touch screen? And depending on what you want to do it shouws you a numberpad, keyboard of your choice or handwriting recognition.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Thank god at least someone still cares about trying to come up with a better interface for a cell phone keypad. I was beginning to get worried that everything was going to converge on the standard, kludgey keypad ("Hit 7 three times for R")... while it looks like some people in this thread have gotten used to it, I can't stand it. Think about it... the interface is 40 years old (first touch tone telephone, 1963) and was never intended for text entry. The engineered inefficiency and its overwhelming rate of adoption is a creepy repeat of how QWERTY still dominates over Dvorak.
:-)
(Not that QWERTY is all bad, it still is much faster than a numeric keypad. I can type 15 words per minute on my Treo using just two thumbs... Of course, 15 years of Nintendo served as excellent training
Like most other modern cell phones, my Sanyo 6400 has a T9 predictive input mode... Once you get used to it, it's really not so bad.
I really don't think the extra keys are worth it considering how much they'll get in the way, so this is not a feature I'd want my next cell phone to have. Besides, if I need to use a real keyboard, I can just plug the phone into my laptop and use the phone as a wireless Internet connection.
I have seen some phones that have fold-up keyboards they can "dock" with... That seems like a much better idea and it would be nice if more phones supported it. I think adding more buttons is really just another example of cell phone designers forgetting the primary use of the device is a phone. I don't need a full alpha numeric keypad to dial phone numbers.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I have one -- the Samsung i300. The interface sucks. Try checking your voicemail or using any phone menu system. Instead of feeling where the key is to erase your message, you have to take the damned phone off of your ear, look at the pad, and find the button. If someone would make an lcd that would allow the app designer to specify that certain areas should be raise (probably by air injection or magnetism), then this would be useful. Until then, its just a PITA.
t'nera semordnilap
I never understood people who think talking on a cell phone in a restaurant is rude.
I've wondered about that myself. I think I find it rude because by and large, people having cell phone conversations tend to raise their voices, sometimes for good reasons of intelligibility and sometimes just because of habit.
On the other hand, people having face-to-face conversations can and usually do adjust their conversation to the ambient level. You can intrinsically speak more quietly f2f than on the phone since you can use visual cues as part of your communication.
So what's wrong if I'm on my cell phone talking to someone?
If you're aware of your physical surroundings and are speaking no louder than you would to a friend across the table, good on ya. OTOH, if you're shouting into your handset, please take it outside.
BTW, I feel the same way about people who have excessively loud f2f conversations the next table over -- I'd like to "butt out" as you so elegantly put it, but if they're yelling then I can't very well, now can I?
I see your point. Because I know how often I rely on tactile sense when I'm dialing my phone or trying to get to my voicemail while driving...errr...I mean when I'm pulled to the side of the road. The raised screen or whatever would have to be added for sure. An added feature would be voice interaction where you could just say "delete." I just worry about those people around you in a restaurant saying "delete" all night long. :) But it would be a good option while driving or whatnot. And that's obviously available as I know how I hate those help lines that tell you to speak into the phone instead of hitting a certain number on the dialpad. I feel like such an asshat when I'm in the middle of a quiet office and it sounds like I'm talking to myself.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
Nope, still dumb.. How many of us QWERTY users shudder when we approach something that has a keyboard arranged ABCDEFG? Ugh! Not optimized in the slightest! (I know, neither is QWERTY, but atleast we're used to it!)
What I wonder is why no one's invested in finding a unique letter layout that's optimized for two-thumb typing... Kinda like the way the FITALY people developed that layout with stylus-tapping in mind, the keyboard could be arraged in four columns like the one in this article, and then arrange the letters so they're most optimized-- i.e. by analyzing letter-pairs in most english text, one finds out that many pairs are more popular than others, and the best solution would be something that keeps alternating between sides.
But what happens when you hit 2 of the surrounding buttons? Or one alpabetic button and a one numeric button. This mistake could happen if you were trying to hit the letter or the number, so there is no real smarts that could be added to the device to make it "forgiving" to these types of mistakes. So, without using the device I will still have concerns about how easy it is to mash the wrong button combinations.
The letters are raised and the numbers are recessed, so presumably it would be hard to accidently press a number plus a letter if you were trying to hit just the letter. So I think that any time you hit a number, all letter keys should be ignored. It should assume that you were going for the number, and ignore any letter keys that you also hit by accident.
Tactile feedback makes using small keypads much easier.
I just recently started doing email on my Palm PDA, and while I'm darn good at Graffiti, writing an email in graffiti gets tiring quickly and I'm looking for a thumbboard.
So... when I saw the phone layout above, It immediately made sense, and I'm sure I could type twice as fast as with the alphabetical layout.
Probably the biggest hurdle to the adoption of this layout is the general perception that John Q. Public is a moron. Seriously, though, I bet that there are a lot of cell phone makers that would GREATLY fear that using a modified QWERTY layout would confuse too many people, while ABCD is understood by everyone and so the speed and efficiency is secondary.
I've noticed that within the last few years, most of the department store bridal registry kiosks have switched from an abcdef layout to QWERTY. I assume that they finally gained confidence that this layout was more familiar and easier to use.
Let's hope the phone companies do some usability studies with the 'WIRED' crowd who will be the early adopters and actually try to do email on these phones instead of pandering to people who don't know how to type.