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Handhelds Hardware

Alphanumeric Phone Keypad - Fastap 160

Posted by michael from the beep-beep-boop-beep-boop dept.
seldo writes "The illustrious BBC has a story about a new mobile phone keypad, designed by a company called Digit Wireless, headed by one Mr David Levy, who "was head of ergonomic design at Apple for five years and was influential in the layout of its Powerbook laptops," according to the article. I don't know how it is to use, but it looks really funky. There's a demo on the site (javascript popup, so no link). The sooner I don't have to deal with the stupid 3-letters-per-button interface to send SMS, the better."
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Alphanumeric Phone Keypad - Fastap More

Alphanumeric Phone Keypad - Fastap

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  • voice recognition (Score:3, Funny)

    by 56ker ( 566853 ) on Saturday May 18, 2002 @12:56PM (#3543071) Homepage Journal
    I think they should just develop voice recognition for phones and do away with the keypad for SMS messages. Then again phones already work on a voice recognition basis - it's called calling someone!
    • Well, there is voice recognition for calling people or doing specific commands (Motorola Timeport for example)...

      However, the chance the phone will actually understand what you said is low... usually it's faster to just type in the number instead of trying to say a name 30 times... also, it will make you look stupid if it doesn't work in the first time :)
      • I think the parent was suggesting voice recognition for SMS-typing, not only dialing. I agree that typing a number of the first letters of a name usually is faster than saying the name over and over, but talking to you phone to write SMSes would be great!

        The sad thing is that SMS holds only 160 letters - there's really not much you can say in those 160 letters. So what people does, is to write ununderstandable stuff. I dunno how this is outside Norway, but here SMS-writings from 14 year olds are generally unreadable.. And that would be hard to implement in voice recognition.

    • Re:voice recognition (Score:2, Interesting)

      by donnacha ( 161610 )

      According to researchers at the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab [umd.edu], voice-recognition will never play an important part in our interaction with Information Technology because we construct our spoken communication in the "short-term" part of our memory.

      This recent /. thread [slashdot.org], discusses a Washington Post article, "A Visual Rather Than a Verbal Future" [washingtonpost.com], which details their work.

    • There's a great funny and subtle scene in the movie "L.A. Story" with Steve Martin where he's programming his new voice-activated telephone/answering machine....

      SM: "Dial Mom."

      Phone: ....

      SM: "Dial MOM."

      Phone: ....

      SM: "Dial... MOM!"

      Phone: bink.bonk.beep.beep.boop.beep.bonk.boop

      Phone: ring..... ring....

      Phone: "Hello, this is Domino's, would you like take out or delivery?"

    • That kinda defeats the purpose of text messaging though.

      SMS is really meant for those times when you want to contact someone and you can't make alot of noise.. like in the back of a lecture hall, or in the middle of a movie. (or at least this is when I've found it most useful)

  • how is this news (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this kind of keypad has been out for months. this is news?
  • And here i was waiting for this [gsmbox.com]. But a less bulky solution will be far more welcome for me. :-)

  • Demo Link (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheCrunch ( 179188 ) on Saturday May 18, 2002 @01:00PM (#3543084) Homepage
    "There's a demo on the site (javascript popup, so no link)."

    Urm yah. The link [digitwireless.com]. (Flash required)

  • why can't they just have a hidden keyboard like one in Sharp linux pda so I can use the keyboard when I really want to (it's phone, I only need the 0-9 buttons most of the time)

  • Japan? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Saturday May 18, 2002 @01:05PM (#3543101) Journal
    "Digit Wireless has also developed a version for Japan that allows the keyboard to represent the 120 characters of the country's languages."

    So this first appeared on Japanese phones. That means on another 10 years it well be the new 'latest development cutting edge' in North America's cellphone technology.

    I live in North America and I still don't have WAP or SMS on my phone ... I have to settle for a proprietary browser and text system.

  • NOKIA and dictionaries... (Score:5, Funny)

    by VEGx ( 576738 ) on Saturday May 18, 2002 @01:06PM (#3543105)
    The "three-letter-per-number" slows the typing, sure. Or better say it did.

    NOKIA, for example, has dictionaries in the newer mobile phones.

    Meaning, you just press each "number" just once, even if the "letter" is the last one under this "number." The dictionary does the guessing and writes the right word.

    Besides, it words as an automatic spellchecker!!! No need to be ashamed your messages now. No one's going to laugh at your bad grammar.

    • No-one uses english in text messages anyway - it's all abbreviated.
    • As you see I'm not writing this on a Nokia phone... I wanted to say "it works as an automatic spellchecker" but... oh well...
    • It's not only in Nokia phones, most of the major european mobile phone players (those being: Sony/Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens and Alcatel) have this function. It's called T9 [t9.com], it's (like I said) available in a LOT of phones [t9.com] and it's pretty much a standard right now. Avalible in a couple dozen languages - including my native polish.

      I absolutely detest it, and it is switched off on my phone. On the other hand, my friend's wife uses it and he claims she's a speed demon when it comes to SMSes...
      • T9 is good but takes a bit of getting used to. I hated it at first but kept playing with it until I got my head round it.

        • Getting used to... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by VEGx ( 576738 )
          That is also true, you need to get used to it.

          But wouldn't it be the same for the new "keyboard"?

          Besides, the dictionary thingie is quite handy. I have to write in Spanish about half of the time. And I'm not exactly Spanish. So it helps me a lot. Although at times it messes up with the "accents." [The future (or first person) is sometimes unknowns for the dictionary.]

    • The dictionaries you are mentioning use T9 technology, which is not all that new. I always keep my T9 on because yes it speeds up your typing.

      Yet the issue at hand here is to totally scrap the need of a dictionary. SMS Texting is mostly popular in Japan and in Europe although its already picking up in the States. Now the problem here is language. I am Maltese, and we usually tend to use Maltese and English interchangably. Yet you can't do this for texting, because the lack of a Maltese dictionary. Also, you tend to use bad gramemr because typing out certain words STILL requires a look up in the dictionary because there would be more common words with the same combination of letters. People who send loads of SMSes would understand me.

      I am totally in favour of encouraging this button layout, so that you don't get to teach your phone your common jargon words. You notice this most when you send messages from someone elses phone. Apart from having to re-learn his/her interface for using T9, you end up discovering that he/she doesn't have the same words. Grrrrrrrr

      my 2c
      • Don't forget that T9 technology has nothing to do with the layout of the keys. You can use T9 in addition to having a nicely laid out keypad and that would speed you up VERY much. The layout of a number pad is bad for entering letters. Enough said.
        • I think T9 speeds up typing, OR the new keypad would speed up typing.

          However, if you have T9 AND the keypad then I don't see a speed increase beyond the max of one or the other.

          In other words, I can see the T9 speeding the normal keypad up to the full keypad. But if you have new keypad... then how is it going to speed your typing if you have the T9? I can see accuracy increase, sure... But speed?

          • I will help speed up your typing, if you are using an alphabet with more than 26 characters, which most languages except english do.

            Typically, in european languages, the new letters would be accented and diacriticated (is that a word?) versions of the normal letters. So T9 technology would help finding the correct version of the letter with the help of a dictionary. I imagine this would help non-latin alphabets as well, such as hebrew, cyrillic, etc...

            Also, it will reduce the number of guesses T9 would have to do. For short words, there are often several candidates, where each letter can be one of three letters (or more). So you have to scroll through a list to find the correct one. If your input is more accurate to begin with, the list of candidate words will be shorter.

    • It does work well and it would be painful to live without, but it really needs some smarts.

      The T9 system should be able to learn from previously entered words like proper names, foreign words and slang (my conversation is much limited by not being able to say jackass, bamboozle or hola amigo!) They should be added to the dictionary after a couple of uses.

      Also previous choices should affect the sequence of the spelling guesses. If I'm an avid saxophonist, when I press 729 'sax' should come up high on the list instead of 7th place.

      I wouldn't imagine that the new generation of phones would have much trouble storing a list of at least 500 or so commonly spelled words.

      -Bruce

    • Gotta Love it. Especially when you're in a club, off your trolley, eye wobbles and shakes, and you can still text "Where are you? The World is a lonely place!" to your friends so they can come and find you.
    • Their website's comparison of their layout, T9, and standard is questionable. I did the "BE HOME BY 9!" test on my ericsson and it took exactly 18 taps, not 23.
  • This is a great idea, I can really see it working BUT the method of entering numbers does sound a tad dodgy:

    "Numbers are typed by pressing the four letter keys surrounding each numeral."

    Surely sensing pressure centred on the actual number buttons themselves would make more sense?

    Otherwise, though, great idea, even beats the Treo.

    • Re:Good idea, only one problem... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      i think they meant your fingers will touch the surrounding 4 keys, but you still do press the actual number button
    • I have no idea where the author of the article got that idea. It's the stupidest thing I've heard for a long while. If you look around the Fastap site, you'll find that you do actually hit the recessed number, and it manages to ignore hits that may be generated by accidentally hitting one of the surrounding letters.

      Incidentally, it looks like they also have a credit-card sized QWERTY keyboard, with numbers and symbols in between the letters. That might be interesting to stick onto a PDA.
  • Has anyone actually used this new key layout? I won't pass judgement until I've used it. The only thing I'd be concern about is the phone better have a key lock to prevent accidentally dialing a number. Most phones seem to have key lock, so other than durability I don't see other huge problems.

  • Every now and then, somebody breaks through with an idea that really changes how we think about things. Fastap is certainly one.

    The best part about this design is that none of us will need to relearn anything. It's easily, almost automatically integratable into our daily lives without having to change our behavior. Certainly this doesn't mean we'll all have one soon. We should, but if we don't, I'll be forever disappointed knowing it existed.

    BTW, wouldn't this concept also work on a PDA virtual keyboard? Seems like somebody could program one for my Palm without too much trouble. Any takers?


    • In effect, they already have with their demo [digitwireless.com].

      Surely, though, a virtual keyboard wouldn't need this?

    • Every now and then, somebody breaks through with an idea that really changes how we think about things.

      So, how long have you worked for the company?


      • > So, how long have you worked for the company?

        Um, I think you might have accidently replied to the wrong posting. I like their idea but I certainly never said "Every now and then, somebody breaks through with an idea that really changes how we think about things."

    • Wow. Putting a button for each letter of the alphabet.. how INNOVATIVE!

      Give me a break.

      Ever tried to type stuff out letter for letter on an alphabetic setup? it's a pain in the ass.

      I bet they get a patent for this incredibly brilliant idea.

      Get real. What's wrong with the virtual keyboard on your pda? How is this any better? This is worse even. At least the virtual keyboard on a pda is arranged like a typewriter, not alphabetically, so you have some natural instinct as to where letters are (if you can type)

      Please. This is news how?
      • So you can type with you thumb reliably, easly, using that virtual keyboard? I'm impressed. But I'm also overcome by the overpowering stench of bullshit.

        QWERTY was designed for typewiters, DOVARK is for keyboards (even though QWERTY dominates). What f'n use are these layouts on a small keyboards like a phone or PDA?

        I'm glad that some people are looking for keyboard alternatives, because QWERTY sucks for this kind of application.

        • DOVARK? I guess you mean dvorak? It was designed for typewriters as well. (although it is newer, and has been quite succesfull at creating a myth of it's superiority, despite the lack of any good scientific studies to back this claim).

  • MessagEase (Score:2, Informative)

    by twms2h ( 473383 )
    Just in case you have not seen it: Another system which I personally like better, is MessagEase. They have got a free (as in beer) software version for PalmOS and a hardware version for mobiles.

    I don't know whether there are actually any mobiles that use it, but that's just because I am one of the few backward people who don't have one. ;-)

    See EXideas' [exideas.com] website for details.

  • What market? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Observer ( 91365 )
    Interesting approach, though I wonder what market is being addressed. The biggest casual users of text messaging these days are young people and for them a few mispellings will be understood from the context, plus as another commenter has noted more recent phones have built-in dictionaries to speed up message composition (though I've found these more a hindrance than a help - my language style perhaps).

    If you're interested in using a mobile messagingto to actually do significant work, where a mistake can cost time, money, inconvenience, hurt feelings, etc, then I suspect you'd prefer to use something PDA-sized which either has room for a real keyboard or allows you to use a stylus & touchscreen to tap out a message.

  • I don't know.. This thing sure adds a lot of new buttons to keep in order. And even thought you have direct access to each letter, I don't really se the point when you have a built-in dictionary. Kind of already gives you direct access, doesn't it?
  • For the past year and a half i've carried the Ericsson Chatboard [ericsson.com] with my t26 and now my t39m with hbh-15 bluetooth wireless headset.

    The keyboard in the phone is no new paradigm -- think back to the late 90s with the release of the Nokia 9xx0 phones. Despite their size they are still popular as mobile email/web terminals.
    I personaly prefer to the t39m to my collection of 9xx0 phones....

    ...and 12keying your message isnt really that bad, ask any guitar player...
  • T9 text input [t9.com] (now owned by AOL) allows you to easily type messages in you phone. It only takes as many key presses as the word is long in most cases, so no more 3 presses per letter. They have a very informative demo on the site showing how it works. basically it guesses which of the three letters you want, based on what you have entered so far, and the best choice changes as you type more letters. If the word you want is the one it guesses, you just cycle to the next word that matches the key combo you entered.
    • I wonder if the demo on the digitwireless site is rigged. T9 claims that 95% of the time the first guess is correct- my experience and pretty good, but the digitwireless shows a 14 key entry for their method, a 23 key entry for T9, and 27 for the conventional entry with multiple taps to get a second or third letter. Also, i cannot believe that the key entry could be a quite as fast per key when the keyboard has the extra complexity.

      If T9's claim is good, digitwireless is not going to be a better solution for monoliqual western language users.
    • I have a sony phone in the UK that uses a t9 dictionary. I tgets it right about 80% of the time which is not bad and you can select alternate words by using the scroll button. Its a bit of a pain when you have to teach it a new word but once it knows it you just type away...
  • I personally would love to see this made for Cyrillic. It won't be a big jump at all, there are only 30 letters there, but it will be a big hit and a nice thing to do.
  • "Mr Levy said it reduced the number of taps needed to form Japanese characters from eight to two. Now, Digit Wireless is working on a keyboard for Chinese."

    I don't know chinese, but I know there's thousands of characters. Anybody have any ideas how they could pull this off?

  • Wow, they're really working David Levy's Apple background for all it's worth!

    From the Digital Wireless Home-page [digitwireless.com]:

    "Fastap could do for wireless phones what Apple Computer's desktop did for the PC."
    -- Brad Smith
    Wireless Week ----

    Looks like the best career move any aspiring Tech billionaire could make is to go earn some bragging rights by spending a few weeks working for Apple. Seriously, if you've just graduated with your 1st in Comp Sci, go work as a toilet attendant in Cupertino, that sort of cred will make even your worst future start-ups seem like rosier prospects.

  • Slow off the mark? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Just_Tom ( 565768 )

    Geeks who are still using so-called "multi-tap" input should be ashamed of themselves. Dictionary based methods, T9 [t9.com] (from Tegic/AOL), and iTap [motorola.com] (Motorola's equivalent) have been standard on phones for a couple of years now, even if they do have their short-comings [cam.ac.uk].

    If you're not into the legacy layout* you could go with MessagEase [exideas.com] or this new thing, but the smart money is on a company called Eatoni [eatoni.com], since they have two products (LetterWise [eatoni.com] and WordWise [eatoni.com]) which they back up with a big stack of research. There's also Zi Corp. [zicorp.com] who make eZiText and eZiTap for SMS input.

    If you're interested in the HCI aspect of all this you could do worse than looking at the work of I Scott Mackenzie [yorku.ca], Poika Isokoski [cs.uta.fi] or Mark Dunlop [strath.ac.uk].

    * 1-800-GOFEDEX anyone? Probably explains why Europe is ahead of the US in this field. That and our ridiculous txt addctn...

  • There are a surprising amount of input technologies available for phones - or unsurprising if you consider the potential return on something like this: look at AOL's T9, which is available in something like 180 models of phone in 15 languages...

    Anyway, a summary, if you are interested, is that of the solutions proposed so far, most of them fall into a few categories:

    Chorded keyboards: Think microwriter here, or a court reporter's typewriter. The idea is that you get around the small space available for keys by having a group of keys select each character; The microwriter only had four keys for the whole alphabet. The speed of input achievable is quite fast, but the interface is far from easy to learn.

    Full key boards: Usually the complaint is that having all of the keys on one small device is no good for anyone with adult sized fingers.

    Soft, or stylus input: This is just a touchscreen solution. You can either use a stylus - which is probably not convenient for a phone, or your fingers, where you are back to the problem of dealing with small or not enough keys.

    Reduced keyboards: Where you use some method other than chording to input characters on a keyboard with fewer keys than letters in the alphabet(e.g. T9, multi-tap...)

    This new device seems to fit in somewhere between a full keyboard and a chorded keyboard. The novel solution here is that you can fit a full keyboard on by using easy-to-learn chording to signify numbers.

  • See Nokia 5510 [nokia.com], it has a largeish split keyboard. Haven't tried it, but I'd imagine it's at least some good.

    And of course, the Communicator [nokia.com] has a normal QWERTY keyboard.

    Other Nokia (and most other makers too) have a predictive system. In my 6310i, it seems to work pretty well, although it's not very useful where you need it most often, inputting text in WAP pages. For example, it can't predict your usernames or passwords for wap sites very well...

    Not that I ever send SMSs. Well, maybe one or two per cell phone I've owned, just to see how it works.

    BTW, WAP version of /. would really be cool, you could read all new things on your cell phone (with GPRS of course). The WAP/HTTP gateways don't seem to convert large html pages to wml very well.
  • Even if it isn't possible to create a true QWERTY layout, I see no value in going with an alphabetical order.
    • Well, IANAE(I am not an Ergonomist {of whatever the term is})but I think it's because everybody already knows the order. They could rearrange it in the most efficient manner, with all the vowels near the center, followed by the most common consonants, etc. byt in order to use it the user would have to relearn how to type. With an alphabetical layout, anybody canfigure out where the letters are without any practice.
      • Well, IANAE(I am not an Ergonomist {of whatever the term is})but I think it's because everybody already knows the order.

        Ahhhh. Same thing earlier designers (such as those on the early Sharp Wizards [yimg.com]) thought. Then studies were done and it was found that due to the breaks in the sequence (not all on one line) people unfamiliar with either layout were slowed by the alphabetical layout just as much as for the QWERTY ones). Then also that the slowdown goes away once the layout was learned. So there are no real benefit from going alphabetical aside from some following incorrect intuition.

        It slowed down those who knew QWERTY, and made no difference to those who didn't

  • TI Calculators (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hyyx ( 447405 ) <cky@snp p . com> on Saturday May 18, 2002 @02:18PM (#3543354) Homepage
    When I saw the layout [digitwireless.com], the first thing I thought about was the abcdef-type text input on TI calulators. I spent a lot of time in school putting _notes_ into my TI, and could never get used to the non-qwerty layout. I would not consider this as a time saver for myself.

  • According to the interactive demo:

    Your finger will touch the letter keys nearby, but that's OK. That's how Fastap technology works... so you don't need to be careful.

    Like most new human interfaces, this will surely take some getting used to, but is this really good ergonomic design? How can you consistently avoid registering a press on nearby buttons? Even if the device is smart enough to tell the difference between intentional and accidental key-presses, every other device out there requires the user to consistently and squarely press each button involved in an input operation. People are used to that, and it's not likely to change.

    I don't know about anyone else, but it's gonna be really difficult for me to feel comfortable using an interface where fat-fingering the keypad is normal.

  • Great idea ... but (Score:4, Interesting)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Saturday May 18, 2002 @02:25PM (#3543380)
    They should add a button to raise and lower the letter keys so you get the option of bringing them up for use, or recessing them when not needed.
    • I don't think it works that way. There aren't extra buttons for the letters, the letters simply ride on the existing number buttons and the phone scans for the 'mashing' of number buttons to guess which letter you were aiming for. Like a diagnol on a digital d-pad, its UP plus LEFT, no extra button required.

      This is probably why the idea is going to fail, extra buttons can't cost *that* much more.
  • I always thought it'd be nice to have two physical devices, possibly connected to the same service and same rate plan. I'd love to just use my cellphone for talking on, and using something with a regular QWERTY keyboard for typing (like Motorola's Vbox).

    I'd really like to get a Vbox [motorola.com] to do messaging with, but I wouldn't want to use it for a phone. I have a phone (V60), but it's awkward to do messaging with (even with T9 [t9.com]). Of course if I did get both, I'd have to pay for both! No thanks!
  • Speaking of cool keyboards, how bout those virtual keyboards [zdnet.co.uk] on zdnet and elsewhere. They project keyboards on any surface and use cameras to sense where your fingers are. Msn story [com.com] with a photo. Different model [ananova.com] at ananova. I know there's no tactile feedback, but think of the compactness.
  • From the article:
    The design fits 26 letters of the alphabet, the * and #, 10 numbers, three punctuation keys, a space bar, shift and delete key into an area no larger than one-third of a business card.

    I dont think we (North) Americans could use it, with our large hands and all...
    "Your fingers are too fat to use this telephone; To order a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your hand now..."

  • the QWERTY story (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mikoca ( 577135 )
    For those who don't like the alphabetical layout here, think about where QWERTY came from [superkids.com] and that this is supposed to replace cell phone keyboards which are already alphabetical, and not computer keyboards.

    • Re:the QWERTY story (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mughi ( 32874 )

      Actually, that article is inaccurate.

      It states that their "salesmen used this slight bit of subterfuge to impress potential customers"... However it failed to get into the typewriter "shoot-outs" that went on during that period, where manufacturers would pit their machines against each other in speed trials. QUERTY came to domminance in those. They world's first and fastest touch-typist also came from the Remingtons' machine promotions. (Look up Frank McGurrin [learningkingdom.com] sometime if you care).

      It also cites Navy experiments on the Dvorak layout. However... they forgot to mention that it was only one study, compared 14 Dvorak typists to 18 QWERTY typists, and that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent. [independent.org]

      For more (but slightly slanted against Dvorak) see "The Fable of the Keys" [utdallas.edu]

      (Note that I'm not saying here that Dvorak just the same as QUERTY, but just that QWERTY is much better than some give credit for, and that Dvorak isn't that vastly ahead).

  • Why "the illustrious BBC"? Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining - just wondering...
  • They've kept the letters in alphabetical order. They should be in QWERTY arrangement.

    When keyboards were first designed in the 80s, the QWERTY design became the most popular as it allows the user's fingers to travel a smaller distance, and to increase typing speed ten-fold over the old clumsy Dvorak systems.
    • How can they make a QWERTY keyboard when there's only five keys across? It'd just be a QWERT.

      Anyway, since there are only 5 keys across, I doubt the QWERTY arrangement will help any, as the keys will be in different places anyway.
    • Keyboards designed in the 80s? What are you on about. The QWERTY keyboard was developed in the 1860s not the 1980s, and it was a competing system to the Dvorak keyboard. Both were to slow down typists to stop the keys jamming on typewriters.

      Get a clue.
      • Whoa. If you're going to correct someone, at least get your facts straight. Dvorak wasn't created until the 1920s/1930s. The Dvorak was created to increase typing speed, rather than to decrease it, by putting the most commonly used letters on the home row. I forget the exact number, but It's something over 80% of the letters typed in a normal English text would be on the home row.
        • Dvorak was still required to slow the typist dow - but it was thought that QWERTY wasn't the best way of doing it. I didn't say anything about when Dvorak was developed. And QWERTY certainly wasn't developed in the 1980s.....
    • The other comments are vallid on this one, but also remember you are most likely to be using just your thumb, so the whole idea of most traditional keyboards can be scraped anyway since you loose 9 of the digits.
  • (from the interactive demo) What kind of New Econmy Dot-Com bullshit marketing crap is that?
  • Is it me or is the placement of the letters all wrong, shouln't the most commonly used letters be grouped together, and the most comon sequences of letters used to work out the relative locations of the other letters, only a short while ago I heard something about the worry of RSI to some people who text to much, surely they should have looked at this...
  • My phone has only two extra buttons on the bottom. The * and the # next to the zero.
    It is what makes my phone this small and easy in use.

    After I read the article I drew the keys to figure out how large it would be (I didn't see the link).
    This way of integrating the alfabet will make it neccecary to make six more buttons.
    SIX more bottons.
    If they start to really use this, making phones as small as mine (a motorola V series 60) will not be an option anymore, because of the huge keypad.
  • I just watched the usage comparison and they showed the t9 option only performing about 3 key strokes better than a multi-tap interface, and significantly worse than their system for the same phrase. So I tested it on my phone with t9, "be home by 9!" only takes 17 key strokes/presses here. Most of them being used to find the !

    hrrrmmmm
  • http://www.digitwireless.com/demos/interactive_fla sh.html

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