Death of the Cell Phone Keypad As We Know It?

An anonymous reader writes, "According to a CNet article, two companies called Mobience and Nuance have created viable and possibly better alternatives to the standard cell phone keypad. 'Mobience, which is based in South Korea, has redesigned the ABC and Qwerty key layout, and come up with MobileQwerty. It's essentially the same three-letters-per-key system as the standard mobile keypad layout, but the letters have been rearranged in a Qwertyesque way to increase efficiency.' The other system developed by Nuance is a mobile speech platform that turns speech into text and replaces the keypad altogether. I was skeptical at first but the video of Nuance's software vs. Ben Cook, the ex world texting champion, is undeniably impressive."

Comments

Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramatic

[Salvance]

Isn't the point of text messaging typically to say something you wouldn't want to say out loud? Nobody cares if you type something provocative, but if you say it while sitting there bored in a meeting, you're probably hosed. I'm not insinuating that the technology is a bad idea, I think it's really cool (particularly if it works better than most voice recognition software), but I don't see it contributing to the "Death of the Cell Phone Keypad as we know it".

Coolest design is...

[b0s0z0ku]

a Siemens SK65 ca. 2004 like I have. The keypad rotates out when needed and is usable with the thumbs like a video game machine. Very ergonomic once you get used to it. And you still have the option of text entry on the numeric pad if you don't want to unfold the phone for some reason. Only problem: it's a Euro tri-band phone that doesn't do 850mHz, so reception outside NYC is sometimes a little spotty. It even has Blackberry functionality built in.

-b.