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Canada gets new "Fastap" cell phone tech

By Rain Noe - August 10, 2007

in Object Culture

Canadians send a reported 21 million text messages every day; could that number double with a different keypad design?

Maybe. Chinese cell phone manufacturer ZTE announced yesterday they'll begin selling their D90 phone in Canada, featuring the innovative "Fastap" keypad, which according to the company leads users to send between two and four times as many text messages as those without the technology.

The keypad looks normal until you start texting, at which point the backlighting switches to highlight the letter keys, which are not the same as the number keys; each letter key is located at the corner junctions between the numbers (look closely at photo, above). This design, coupled with ZTE's proprietary predictive text program, supposedly leads to the blazing speeds and vastly higher number of messages sent.

Question is, does it work? We here in the U.S. office won't know 'til we can get our hands on one. Any of you Canucks care to help us out?

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Samantha

16 years ago

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i really like my phone.
its a ZTE
i like the keyboard ... but the only thing i wish was different was the order of letters ... i wish instead of ABCD.. they were the QWERTY system QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM ..
because im just use to typing like that now so it is kinda hard to adjust .. but after a while its fine / . :)
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Randy Millan

16 years ago

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works great. I even got a really top class leather case w/ mine
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Michael S.

17 years ago

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Just saw a D90 at the TELUS store in Vancouver. Good looking device. After ten minutes of using it, I was texting without looking at the keys. The prediction engine is actually Zi Corporation's eZiType engine.
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