Thursday, October 26, 2006

Better support for 'touch typing' on mobile phones

I often type SMSs or notes on my phone while I’m walking. Sometimes because it’s some spare time to do stuff, but also because walking frees up my mind and I often think of things when doing it. I’d like it if I could type them without having to continually look down to the phone to see what I’m doing.

Part of it is having to look down to see what keys I’m pressing. I can usually move my thumb to the right area without looking, but not quite accurately enough. It’d help there was tactile identification of the different keys. Perhaps they could have different texture patterns on each of them. Perhaps even the braille codes for the numbers on the keys.

The other part of it is in getting feedback on what you have typed. Rather than having to look down at the screen to see what character I’ve entered, it'd help if the phone could give me auditory feedback and read out that character. This would be particularly useful if I was using the handsfree headset.

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