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Brilliant (If It's Real) Interface Design for Text Messaging

By Rain Noe - July 5, 2012

in UX

I love the iPhone—and I hate the keyboard. In the mid-2000s I was what Bostonians call "wicked fast" with T9 on my old Motorola, but even though I've owned every generation of the iPhone since its debut in 2007, I don't think I've ever sent a single text message without making errors and needing to backspace.

So I'm very intrigued by the leaked photo above, which is purportedly from an internal presentation by Microsoft Research. Its simple design is intelligently curved, so that (right-handers at least) can reach all of the buttons with a single thumb; furthermore it retains a QWERTY-style keyboard but groups letters together in threes and fours, using a T9-like predictive technology to figure out what you're trying to type.

The website WMPoweruser.com hopes the new interface will make an appearance in Windows Phone 7.8, but nothing's confirmed.

While I'll never purchase a Windows phone, I do hope the interface is real—the shot looks pretty doctored. The perspective on the "Curved to match thumb" line is obviously, badly faked, and the button on the lower right is presumably supposed to say "Menu"—so why's the "M" missing?

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Adam

12 years ago

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How can you just say, without a doubt, you'll never buy a windows phone? That's some pretty extreme brand loyalty.

Anyway, the keyboard reminds me of this ill fated phone:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/24/emblazes-first-else-unveiled-in-london-promises-to-be-a-game-c/

http://firstelse.com/

But I think it'd be very awkward.
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crimsonwolf

12 years ago

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While I also question the veracity of the image, I'd like to correct you on one thing: Windows Phones come with default multilanguage keyboard support, the ENU key shows the current language (ENU=English United States and ESN=Latin American Spanish, for instance) and pressing it will switch the keyboard to the next enabled language.
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