Death of the Cell Phone Keypad As We Know It? 273
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? (Score:2)
So they've also been set up to avoid jamming?
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On T9, "he" and "if" are jammed together on 43. On MobileQWERTY, they are not.
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for small words (and perhaps more problematically while less frequently for
long words) it is hard to guess how many times you will have to press
the "next" button. So it requires more attention than simply typing automatically
(especially without having to watch the screen while typing) : knowing that
pressing three times this key will give this character is predictable.
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Re:Qwertyesque way? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Why on Earth would it be more efficient to group all punctuation to a single key? Its already on 1 right now which really sucks when you're trying to use it for clarity. I'd love to see a layout based on avoiding predictive text clashes, personally. Probably different for each language, of course, but still if you're limiting yourself to 12 keys...
Re:Qwertyesque way? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Dvorak would be less efficient on a phone keypad, as all the most common letters would be placed on 3 buttons.
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Actually, I'm just looking for a cite I can give to my friend who swears by dvorak.
Give me Morse code! (Score:2)
The texting champion was beat on late-night television by a ham radio operator using Morse code. I know Morse code, and can key it a hell of a lot faster than punching out T9 on a keypad, especially if I'm using IAMBIC paddles (a 2-key arrangement). Give me a cell phone with IAMBIC paddles, and I'll text circles around you.
Until then, voice will do just fine.
Re:Qwertyesque way? (Score:5, Funny)
--
Evan
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The parent doesn't look anything like a troll to me. Nope. Snopes.com totally debunked that QWERTY myth. I just don't have a link handy.
ETAOIN SHRDLU (Score:3, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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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? (Score:4, Funny)
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I think it's because of that song.
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Though it would be better if it could be spelled without repeating any letters. How about "quertyfsck"?
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Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramatic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramat (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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Does that make more sense to you?
Back in the day, mobile phones couldn't send text messages. Now they can.
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The most powerful aspect of text communication is the sheer number of assumptions you can make.
You don't have to say "Hello", "goodbye" or go through any off-beat pleasantries.
You just say the message and you're done.
You can encapsulate an entire message in one uninterrupted burst - this can eliminate a lot of unnecessary questions, dissemblage, and digressions.
You can abbreviate.
You can send messages which do not require a response.
You ca
mod parent up (Score:2)
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.
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Re:Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramat (Score:2)
Use your imagination! (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re:Death knell of the keypad - a little overdramat (Score:2)
Perhaps for some people. For me, the point is usually to let somebody know something that I don't expect an immediate reply to (e.g. because I'm asking them to make a decision that they'll need to think about before getting back to me, or I'm just notifying them of something they won't actually need to discuss with me).
speech into text (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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What a great idea! *rushes off to the patent office*
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I am sure that soon we will have readers for our text messages, a
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Heaven forbid that one should watch the performance, listen to the speaker, or participage in the meeting. Honestly, whatever you have to say can probably wait.
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Not really.
Texting came about as a side effect of how the gsm network works, and was initially not intended for end-users but for testing. That it exists in its current form is merely an accident.
Sending a text message can be efficient when you have a very short message for someone, but as soon as some form of 2 way communications is required, or the message
Trade-Offs (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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Txting is nicely asynchronous, and less of a grab for attention than voicemail, and much less time consuming to check.
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Over here in the UK, BT already provides a service where they'll phone you and have a computer read your text messages over the line to you, so all you need to do is put the two services together...!
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Bah, speak for yourself. Everyone that wants to save some money, uses sms instead of calling for things that don't need a call.
In countries like mine, where a cell phone minute costs 0.5 USD, and almost all cell plans come with lots of SMS, having voice-translated SMS would be cool and save lots of time.
aging eyes.. (Score:2)
Ow..ow..ow..ow (Score:2)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
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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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.
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What kinda conversations do you have where you type 'doo'? Using SMS to discuss Sony's marketing strategy?
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Fine if you're dealing with common West European languages I guess. YOU fail it, condescending prick.
-b.
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And neither is there for the variation on Dutch that they speak in Belgium.. Since there is a 'standard' Dutch T9 dictionary, that is what they use. I am pretty sure there is a standard German one (I use it quite often), and I bet that with a few modifications, it would work well for Swiss as well.. For all I can tell the bigger differenc
Texting is for when you _can't_ talk (Score:2, Insightful)
The keypad doesn't change here. (Score:2)
Coolest design is... (Score:4, Interesting)
-b.
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That's the one bug, not a feature! Those goth chicks are hot, unfortunately, they run screaming when I use the phone. Oh well, can't have it all, I guess.
-b.
EUROPHON-1 Standard (Score:2)
Nuance (Score:2)
Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
MobileQwerty (Score:3, Insightful)
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But, thanks for the typical AC comment.
CAUTION: Patent pending (Score:2)
From Mobience page [mobience.com] (SWF):
So don't plan on seeing anything like this in the Free world for 20 years.
Simpsons did it? (Score:3, Informative)
(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/micr
but without the individual character ABCDE etc. keys.
SoS (Score:2)
This might be a stupid question, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This might be a stupid question, but... (Score:4, Informative)
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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
Human Interfaces (Score:2)
Second I'd like to see a better device design. Keyboard constraints are due to "standard" designs: brick shaped devices give no alternatives.
Third I'd like to see some more advance in the T9-like technologies: they lack context analysis.
won't catch on mainstream (Score:2)
Did anyone else (Score:2)
The death of the keypad is a long, long way off. (Score:2)
The reason why keyboards and phone keypads haven't changed much in all this time is because it's exceedingly difficult to come up with anything more practical than we have now. Touch screen displays certainly have helped to some extent, but even that is inferior to a keypad. Perhaps there's some kind
Half-baked Layout... (Score:2)
One thing is certain though; after you feed your parameters through a genetic algorithm of some sort, you are unlikely to end up with anything resembling a qwerty layout. With a 9x9 keypad, perhaps the
possible improve
QWERTY, Yes. But not 3 letters per key. (Score:2)
From the statistics standpoint, having 3 letters per key gives you a 33% chance of guessing the right letter. Moving to a system with two letters per key increases those odds to 50%.
I used to own a phone with T9, and I can say without hesitation that
I got a Q keyboard on my nokia 5510 (Score:2)
Still a stupid idea (Score:2)
I'd like to have the option of having som
Death of common sense (Score:2)
Maybe you shouldn't be using a phone then. So long as the primary purpose of a device is two-way audio communications, it's going to (or should) be designed to do that best. Now, even though I am a Fat American(tm), I know that a lot of the world uses text messaging more than anything else. So - shouldn't there instead be a text-me
Here's a Brain Teaser (Score:2)
Try to create an English sentence of 160 letters but only 4 words.
The mobiescence site says it can by typed in 20 seconds on a QWERTY keyboard with 164 keystrokes.
Morse Code (Score:3, Interesting)
The Morse code guy pretty much kicked that cell phone whippersnapper's ass.
Re:Umm....QUERTY isn't for efficiency (Score:4, Funny)
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Actually, he tried typing QWERTY, but it caused the keys to jam, so that internet didn't make it through the tubes.
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Re:Umm....QUERTY isn't for efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
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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And for those of us muumuu wearing
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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 (Score:5, Informative)
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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By efficiency, I meant "possible keypresses in a given time." And I explained the history in my post.
-b.
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That's exactly what they've done. The numeral 1 key is EWQ. The general relationships are the same as the QWERTY layout - QWE in the top left, ZXC in the bottom left - but not the exact sequence.