New tech could make typing and texting easier on smartphones

Anyone who's ever got an email typed on Blackberry or similar will recognise the problem. Tiny qwerty keyboards don't make for a good typing experience - especially now that many handsets are putting their inputs onto a touchscreen -  and emails from portable devices are often littered with typos.

There could be a new solution on its way, however, courtesy of the same man who made all of our lives easier by bringing us T9 predictive texting. Seattle-based Cliff Kushler has invented  a new system of inputting text into smartphones and other mobile devices - which he is calling Swype.

The system allows users to spell out words by gliding over the keypad with their finger, rather than tapping each key. It detects pauses and direction changes in the gliding digit, and uses that to work out which word the user is aiming for. Spacing and punctuation are provided automatically, and capitals can be created by a pause or a squiggle - and it's so much easier that Kushler reckons it could speed up the process of typing on smartphones by 20 to 30 per cent, even for those of us who are already pretty nifty with a smartphone keypad.

You may never have given any thought to what difference predictive text makes, but try turning it off sometime. It's such a boon to handset users that it is in more than 4 billion devices worldwide; and was sold to AOL for around $350 million - and Swype could be set to revolutionise the way we interact with handsets again.

“We’ve squeezed the desktop computer, complete with keyboard and mouse, into something that fits in a pocket," he said. "The information bandwidth has become very constricted. I thought, if we can find a better way to input that information, it could be something that would really take off.”  

Swype is already on seven smartphone models in the States, so watch this space for UK handsets with easier typing courtesy of Swype. In the meantime, you can check out a  Swype Demo on YouTube.