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."

Qwertyesque way?

[aussie_a (778472)]

but the letters have been rearranged in a Qwertyesque way to increase efficiency.

So they've also been set up to avoid jamming?

Re:

[tepples (727027)]

So they've also been set up to avoid jamming?

On T9, "he" and "if" are jammed together on 43. On MobileQWERTY, they are not.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

That's what the "Next" button is for on your phone. I think T9 is great. If you only have 9 keys, you're still going to need T9. I doesn't matter how you lay out the letters, it's always faster to type 1 key than average 2 keys for each letter. Depending on how smart the software is, T9 can really speed you up.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

But that's still 1.35. Which is greater than 1. With predictive text input, some words don't even require you to type all the letters. If you have 9 letter word, you may only have to type in 6 letters before that word is the only choice. This works a lot better than having to type more keys than letters, and will almost always be faster. I think a combination of the two technologies would be the best solution.

Re:Qwertyesque way?

[Neil Hodges (960909)]

So they've also been set up to avoid jamming?

Then why don't they use the Dvorak layout? It's theoretically more efficient and the punctuation will be grouped to one key.

I've been typing on Dvorak for years; why would they leave all non-QWERTY (default) users in the cold?

Maybe the real question is this: why hasn't Dvorak caught on? Is change really that hard?

Re:Qwertyesque way?

[DragonWriter (970822)]

Maybe the real question is this: why hasn't Dvorak caught on? Is change really that hard?

Most people who are particularly concerned with typing efficiency are people with years of experience and very good efficiency on QWERTY keyboards; while Dvorak may be easier to develop efficiency with from the ground up, you'll take a proficiency hit if you are an excellent typist with years of experience with QWERTY. Plus, lots of people concerned with typing efficiency can't control the layout of every keyboard they might need to use, so switching layouts for their main use would require maintaining proficiency in both.

And, of course, schools are going to keep teaching people on whatever is most common, so QWERTY has a pretty solid lock.

Re:Qwertyesque way?

[JabberWokky (19442)]

It's true! The QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow down typing... it was because when fleeing from the killer with a hook, and you were hiding in the sewers you'd not want the giant alligators to hear you typing. While nowadays you have to text your babysitter to make sure she didn't microwave the baby.

...and other urban legends...

--
Evan

ETAOIN SHRDLU

[Millennium (2451)]

If anything, "emulating the QWERTY layout" is nothing more than marketing for these folks. The real boost here comes from someone else.

Refer back to the title of my post: ETAOIN SHRDLU. It's a mnemonic you see a lot in cryptographic circles, and you can memorize it as though it were a name. It's not an abbreviation, though; it's a list of the twelve most common letters in the English language, in order of how common they're used (E being the most common). If you were to count the letters in the words in an

Re:Qwertyesque way?

[russellh (547685)]

Obviously, everyone knows their QWERTY a lot better than they know their ABCs.

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[teslar (706653)]

On slashdot? Obviously. We see Qwerty or local equivalents every day. When was the last time you needed your ABC? Lists don't count, your computer will sort them for you.

They might as well start teaching QWERTY instead of ABC in school and then do a study on how that affected average nationwide typing speeds :)

Re:Qwertyesque way?

[The Great Pretender (975978)]

Who the hell said that A should come before B anyway? and why should Z be at the end? I say give Z some love, put it before J, which is a stupid letter anyway.

Re:

[Tim Browse (9263)]

Who the hell said that A should come before B anyway? and why should Z be at the end?

I think it's because of that song.

Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramatic

[Salvance (1014001)]

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".

Re:Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramat

[El Torico (732160)]

I thought that this line was one of the most amusing things I've read in a while -

In a practical situation, however, most mobile phone and voice-recognition users would agree that having to speak into your phone isn't always ideal or even possible.

It shows just how different the idea of the "telephone" is from a decade ago.

Re:

[timeOday (582209)]

It shows just how different the idea of the "telephone" is from a decade ago.

Email (which is what "texting" really is) hasn't changed too much though. I figure it's just a quirk of history that we think of cellphones as a phone with a pda, camera, and email. Had the Treo been #1, maybe we'd think of them as PDAs with voice capability. Not that the devices would have ended up any different anyways, it's just interesting how the particular evolutionary path can change how we think of something even if al

mod parent up

[ethanms (319039)]

as insightful... I agree...

on the one hand you have a new layout for the keypad that matches qwerty--qwerty works because you have 4 fingers and two thumbs available... for a keypad it might be a bit better, but what does it really gain?

the other is speach to text... which completely stupid as a 100% replacement for a keypad because 100% of what I type in SMS' I don't want to say out loud, that's why I'm not calling.

Re:

[ethanms (319039)]

me brains not work good... another reason speech to text will suck.

Re:Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramat

[Z0mb1eman (629653)]

I'm guessing you haven't been around any European teenagers lately. Frankly, they make the 308 presses/67 seconds record listed in the ad seem a bit low :p

Use your imagination!

[Equis (723653)]

It's not much of a stretch to see that it'd be handy for standard email messaging, instant messaging, note taking, and sending SMSs to multiple recipients. All of these are possible on today's phones.

There are obviously more applications for this than cheating on tests and discreetly texting your girlfri... cheating on tests.

speech into text

[yagu (721525)]

Let's see, we got cell phones so we could talk. Then the cool idea of texting (yawn). And now, a mobile phone that let's you talk into it, and convert that to text to send a text message? Wow!

I'm holding out for the phone that translates my voice directly into voice the other party can hear. Sigh

Re:

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

I'm holding out for the phone that translates my voice directly into voice the other party can hear.

What a great idea! *rushes off to the patent office*

Trade-Offs

[TubeSteak (669689)]

We're dealing with a series of trade offs

speaking is faster than typing (for most people)
reading is faster than listening (for most people)
Time: speaking vs typing
cost: static connection vs burst transmissions

Talking on a cell phone is really expensive (once you run over your minutes) compared to a text message. At that point, it would be cheaper & faster to use a speech-to-text setup on your cellphone.

The rest of the time, using a speech-to-text setup is merely a choice of conveinence, since it is gene

aging eyes..

[Adult film producer (866485)]

I know my parents would love to say goodbye to the keypad. All the cellphones these days are just too small, the buttons too small (and what about people with really big fingers?) I tried finding them a cellphone with extra-large keys but gave up and bought them a motorola unit that they can kind of read but it's difficult without their reading glasses. Screw voice technology, just give me a cellphone with big digits on it... they know how to use a phone, no fancy voice activation stuff that will probab

Ow..ow..ow..ow

[sugapablo (600023)]

My thumb hurts. My eyes burn. My brain aches.

Looks like men now must make a choice. Texting or masturbation. No man will be able to coordinate both with keypads like this.

Only if you're new to a keypad

[Weaselmancer (533834)]

I hear Dvorak keyboards are more efficient. But I don't use one. Why? I already have the qwerty keypad memorized. Not only would I have to learn the Dvorak layout, but I'd have to somehow forget the qwerty one.

So yeah, this might be a great idea - if you've never used a keypad before.

Re:Only if you're new to a keypad

[CoderBob (858156)]

You don't have to forget qwerty. I used dvorak for a while, and while I don't remember it well enough anymore to really be productive with it, I could switch back and forth between the two without too much difficulty. I remember typing faster qwerty (not "correct" qwerty, but my slightly hybrid version) than dvorak, but that was probably 6 years of qwerty vs. 2 months of dvorak.

It's like knowing C and Python seperately. You can code in either C or Python without forgetting the other every time you need to switch languages. You might slip up here and there with syntax or function names until you've built up some decent experience with both of them, but knowing both opens up a lot of options. The same could be said for multiple keyboard layouts. Knowing both provides options.

T9

[Yer Mum (570034)]

However it won't catch on because everybody's used to the ABC layout, and somebody's already come up with T9 which works well enough for most people for entering large amounts of text instead of numbers.

If it were otherwise, computer keyboards would be Dvorak instead of Qwerty.

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[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

somebody's already come up with T9 which works well enough for most people for entering large amounts of text instead of numbers.

T9's annoying. (a) I often text in other languages than English - business reasons. (b) it's too much like Clippy. 'Did you mean "foo"?' (when I try to type "doo".)

-b.

Re:

[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

So do I. But I fail to see how that is relevant. T9 works just as well with, say, French or German or Swedish as with English.

Fine if you're dealing with common West European languages I guess. YOU fail it, condescending prick.

-b.

Texting is for when you _can't_ talk

[MarsBar (6605)]

Well duh, that's just stupid. Yes, speaking might be quicker than texting but if I'm somewhere I can text using speech recognition I might as well pick up the phone and talk.

The keypad doesn't change here.

[hal2814 (725639)]

From what I've seen from the QWERTY links, the keypad stays very much alive. The key mappings are what change. And it seems to me that the cases in which you are likely to use text messaging are not generally cases where efficiency is essential.

Coolest design is...

[b0s0z0ku (752509)]

a Siemens SK65 ca. 2004 like I have. The keypad rotates out [engadget.com] 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.

EUROPHON-1 Standard

[Dynamoo (527749)]

They missed the European Union's EUROPHON-1 Standard [mobilegazette.com] (pronounced "euro phoney") out. This is clearly a case of the European Union gone mad. ;)

Nuance

[bahwi (43111)]

Nuance creates Dragon Naturally Speaking, and version 9 is the best so far. Yeah, it's not great for programming, but it gives my hands a break for IMs and E-Mails, as well as has a speech-to-text for MP3's from my voice recorder(yes, not a big feature for most people, but it is for me). 8 was good, but you had to train it, I've barely had to correct 9 at all.

Oblig.

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

The other system developed by Nuance is a mobile speech platform that turns speech into text and replaces the keypad altogether.

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all.

MobileQwerty

[mattwarden (699984)]

Why would a qwerty layout on a 10 digit keypad be more efficient than some other layout? They seem to be assuming that the knowledge a user has to use a qwerty layout on a traditional keypad would translate easily to the 10 digit layout. I'm not so sure that's how it works (and I was a Cognitive Science major).

CAUTION: Patent pending

[tepples (727027)]

From Mobience page [mobience.com] (SWF):

As a legal applicant of relevant patents, we think we are the one to choose the right layout and it's our responsibility. (In fact, both of them are within the scope of relevant patents to protect injudicious and confusing variations.) We believe there must be a single right mobile layout for globality and universality reasons just like the keyboard case.

So don't plan on seeing anything like this in the Free world for 20 years.

Simpsons did it?

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke (850482)]

http://www.blackberry.com/products/suretype/index. shtml [blackberry.com]
(OK - that has with 5 keys across rather than 3)

It's not a perfect solution - a number of 3 letter combinations have multiple words that they can mean. Actually, what I'd rather have is something like the old Microwriter Agenda:

http://www.geoff.org.uk.nyud.net:8080/museum/micro writer.htm [nyud.net]

but without the individual character ABCDE etc. keys.

This might be a stupid question, but...

[thesolo (131008)]

If you rearrange the letters and the numbers they correspond with, won't that screw up phone numbers that use text spellings? For example, Comcast's main phone number is 1-800-COMCAST (800-266-2278). If suddenly your keypad has "TUY" mapped to number 2 instead of number 8, that spelling isn't going to work any longer. With "MobileQwerty", 1-800-COMCAST becomes 1-800-739-7472, aka a wrong number. What are they planning on doing, only having the letters arranged differently for sending text messages, and otherwise having the standard ABC configuration for normal dialing? Seems like it would be very confusing.

Re:This might be a stupid question, but...

[mrpaco18 (958815)]

My Blackberry uses a qwerty letter arrangement (over 5 keys instead of 3, but the point remains). It allows me to enter letters directly into the number I am dialing and then converts the letters into the appropriate numbers before placing the call. For example, in the number you provide, I would enter 1-800-COMCAST. My Blackberry would then convert that into 1-800-266-2278 and place the call.

Re:

[Chapter80 (926879)]

Others have mentioned the conversion process that could exist on the phone.

One thing to consider: By statistically laying out the alphabet, with high frequency letters spread over all keys, you increase the likelihood that a phone number will spell something in the NEW system.

Right now, the numbers 0,1,5 and 9 have very little use (because they only have the letters JKLWXYZ on them), In this new system, there would be 9 numbers with the nine most popular letters on them.

So you'd just need to know wh

Morse Code

[Dachannien (617929)]

A while back on Leno, they pitted a teenaged, self-proclaimed fast text messager against an old guy who knew Morse code. They gave each of them the same message to send, and started them at the same moment to see who could send their message faster.

The Morse code guy pretty much kicked that cell phone whippersnapper's ass.

Re:Umm....QUERTY isn't for efficiency

[wiz31337 (154231)]

Umm... Its QWERTY, not QUERTY. Didn't typing the U slow you down?

Re:

[Gospodin (547743)]

Actually, he tried typing QWERTY, but it caused the keys to jam, so that internet didn't make it through the tubes.

Re:Umm....QUERTY isn't for efficiency

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve (949321)]

QUERTY was originally designed not to increase typing efficiency--in fact, the opposite is true. Typists were getting so fast with ABCDE layouts that the keys were jamming. QUERTY was designed in part to slow typists down.

Actually, QWERTY was designed to keep the typebars from sticking together, which was happening too much with an alphabetic layout. It wasn't to slow typists down, but that might have been a side effect.

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[timeOday (582209)]

Plus, we're talking about thumb boards here anyways. There's no reason to think that whatever effect QWERTY layout has on 10 finger typing would carry over to thumbs-only typing.

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[toleraen (831634)]

thumbs-only typing

And for those of us muumuu wearing /.ers, 'special dialing wand' typing.

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[mungtor (306258)]

No, it shouldn't. The Qwerty-esque style still increases efficiency over the standard alphabetical layout, and is called such since the keys are arranged in a pattern that isn't too much of a departure for people used to qwerty keyboards.

Dvorak is interesting, and a good thing for some people who actually have to type in the english language as their primary use of their computer (transcriptionists or such). For coders and sysadmins, Dvorak breaks down because many of the things you are typing aren't wo

Re:Umm....QUERTY isn't for efficiency

[Captain Sarcastic (109765)]

QUERTY was designed in part to slow typists down.

A popular legend, but not actually based in fact.

Here [mit.edu] is a pretty decent discussion of the truth - and some of the hype - about Dvorak vs. qwerty.

I now switch you back to your regularly-scheduled browsing.

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[joseprio (923259)]

QWERTY was designed to reduce the jamming of keys, so it allowed fast typists go faster, not slowing them down! That it was designed to reduce the efficiency of typists is a very common (and wrong) myth.