Slashdot Mirror
(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
Both pictures available in the article are too close-up to see the entire keypad...Here's a better pic:
http://www.futurebytes.ch/images/news/fastpad.jpg
:wq
. . . a dead mobile keyboard. Every mobile input device I've used until now is slow and sucks arse. A good speech based input device may help but you can't use that everywhere. It'll be like the annoying cellphone freaks who think we want to listen to their conversation in a restaurant.
j4Ust W1h1a8t we al3l ne21ed!!!
Okay, obligitory funny out of the way, it actually might just work out. As far as I'm concerned the extra $2 bucks a month I spend on unlimited text messaging on my phone saves me a ton of money because I'm not using minutes. Anything to help facilitate me using it more, I'm all for.
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
I already have a hard enough time with a regular key pad, now I have to deal with this too? The idea is good, but will not be usefull for me.
Yorks peally hre4t
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
keyboards are the next bit of technology that need to be brought into the 21st century. While they have come a long way, you'd think we'd have some more intuitive device to use by now. I think the concentration isn't in the right area with respect to keyboards. I'm thinking light sensor keyboard that could project on any smooth surface.
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.
...
The BBC covered this keypad in May last year and again in November .
Get speech recognition, or improve handwriting recognition.
Scre any and all cheesy ass miniature keyboard thumb twiddling little clusterfuck pain in the ass monkey boards. They'll never come up with something truly usable.
And I hate those stupid thumbpads and twizzle sticks on laptops too. Put a damn trackball down in the lower right (fuck lefties!), you insensitive clods!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Plain alphabetical order is better than a poorly designed layout that sticks around because most people are afraid of change.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Now, I love the T1 predictive typing thing. As long as you can spell more or less accurately then you can get very fast on that, and you still only need the letter keys. However, having seen proof from many people I tell about it who never switch it on because they don't "get it" or get frustrated... maybe it's not the way forward. Also, ppl cnt wrt abbrvs in thr texts w dicts...
I also liked the look of that system where letters sort of scrolled in front of you and you picked the one you wanted, automatically likely choices for the next letter were bigger and so on. Wasn't particularly intuitive though, even less so than T1 dictionary stuff.
But now, tiny keys, and not in the QWERTY pattern either? How is this helping? And you have to press multiple keys to get numbers, once the basis of all telephone dialling circuit I/O?
Just another gimmick. There's a proverb from some oriental culture that says 'there are those that will try to sell the same thing with an extra spurious (useless) addition on the merits of the spurious addition, and win the marketing war'
Rough translation, obviously.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Maybe it's just because I've become so adept at using the traditional one, but I have my doubts about this one, for two main reasons...
1. At this stage I, and indeed the rest of the texting universe, know where 'R' is; just press 7 three times. I don't even need to look at the keypad any more. Just because I've to press it three times doesn't make it a chore. With use, it's easy. That may be true of the new keyboard, but more keys doesn't make it simpler. Which brings me to point two:
2. As I said, I don't need to look at the keyboard any more; that's because there are just four rows of three keys. With this one, if I want to text without looking I'd have to feel my way from one of the corners. That, or stop texting while I walk. That, or bump into a lot of lampposts. 4x7 is not simpler than 3x4.
And anyway, unless the protruding keys are huge (making the numbers difficult to use), punctuation is still going to have to be shifted. Unless, of course, UR 1 F THSE FKRS HO DNT UZ PNKTN.
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.
This isn't a keyboard for PDAs, it's a keyboard for mobile phones, hence the juxtaposition of alphabetical keys around a numeric keypad with the primary focus still on the numbers.
The whole purpose of this layout is to make texting (sending text messages via SMS) easier but the primary focus is still on dialling.
This isn't designed for PDA text entry. It's not even designed for PDA/phone convergence devices. It's designed for phones and phones only.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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...
Now I can type on my phone but intel has made it impossible to dial!
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.
The Fastap keypad does away with the need to press keys several times to scroll through the letters associated with each number.
There is a (partial) software solution. Try sending SMS messages from a Nokia 6210 or 6310 phone: there is this nifty dictionary that "knows" which word you are typing. As a result, you practically never need to press a key more than once to get the right letter.
This leaves inputting new telephone numbers, addresses, calendar entries, etc. Those usually contain names and other words that are not parts of the dictionary, so you do need to press the keys as many times as needed. This happens relatively infrequently (how often do you input a new phone number?) and is not a problem.
The hardware solution seems clunky to me. I don't SMS as often as European kids, but I do use the feature, and typing is fast and convenient.
Quick, dial KLOP KLOP ABEF !
There have been several incorrect statements about how the input will work. Here's the facts that I found from a manufacturer of this device:
:).
:)
1) If you have small fingers you can press the inset button to get a number.
2) If you have large fingers you can press the four buttons surrounding the number.
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.
Also, full blown handwritting or speach recognition not panaceas, when you concider that it is not uncommon for a people to make mistakes reading their own handwritting, or listening to other people.
Although it would be interesting if hand printing and diction started being taught in school again to help with computer interfaces, I don't think that they will ever become the primary input method for a computer. Typing is faster than handwriting, and more accurate. And having cubicles full of people talking to computers all day would be too annoying (then again I've never worked in a call center
For cell phones, eatoni's WordWise is the best thing I have seen yet. It is a predictive method. And let me tell you I hate most predictive input methods, and usually end up switching back to multi-tap. But with wordwise you use a shift key to provide a little more info, which lets it do an incredably good job at guessing. The site has a bunch of research that shows how the number of keystrokes is smaller than both predictive and multitap methods. Plus, unlike predictive methods where your next keypress can dependant on what the current guess is, WordWise is non-modal, allowing your actions to become habituated, and thus even faster (ie you can touch type on it).
For PDA's Quick Writing is very cool. It requires you to learn the input method, just like you have to learn how to type, but is it damn fast. Faster than grafitti, and often even faster than handwriting. Think of it as cursive on amphetamines
- jackson
I think the solution to the mobile keyboard problem would be for everyone to learn stenography -- like court reporters use. The key boards on the stenography devices use a minimal key set. This would be perfect for moble devices. Check the the key pad lay out. Not only is the key board layout greatly simplifiet, but a court reporters can kick the the ass of the best typest on the plannet using a standard key board.
Would have been better to pick this layout
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
I know someone might steal this idea but, anyway, I want to help the development. Why not keep this great concept and by rotating the phone right, we can have a QWERTY type keyboard instead of the ABCD type proposed by the prototype. You just have to add a little sensor able to rotate de display in the direction the phone is rotated and now IM will sell like hot bread.
You could even work on it to mix common and uncommon letters, putting the common ones first and the uncommon ones 2nd, and the damn right rare ones last.
Like so: (Taken from 'etaoinshrdlu' and just tossed the rest of the letters in there)
The periods signify 'common symbols' that I don't really care to think about. Enter, backspace, and space seem good ideas for #, 0, and *'s main character, with a mode where that's all they are. Anyway, I've given this too much though for how late in the post it's going to end up.Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
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.
Here's the original Slashdot article from last year. It sounded like a brilliant idea to me at the time, I was wondering if they were getting anywhere...
ObSimpsons
I think it would be nice if a good chording keyboard standard caught on. It would be a lot easier to make a smaller keyboard if it only had five buttons.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
From the article:
Words can be typed by pressing the raised keys, and numbers by pressing the four keys that surround a particular number.
If i'm reading that correctly, they solved the alpha problem rather elegantly but broke the numbers in the process. You have to push FOUR buttons SIMULTANEOUSLY to get a number out! Sounds like one step forward, two steps back. I think I'll pass.
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.