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.
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 .
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
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
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.
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
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.
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...
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.