Given the lack of qwerty keyboards on most touchscreen-based PocketPC phones and PDAs, this (recently freed for personal usage) input method will change the way you feel about your device. TenGO is using predictive text with only 6 buttons and in this video you can witness a woman writing 72 words per minute with her stylus. The buttons are pretty large and so finger typing is pretty fast too (at least 45 wpm which is faster than typing T9 on a cellphone or on Blackberry/Treo’s crammed thumbboards). Version 2 of the software is even more powerful and available for $25.
TenGO 1.0 Now Free for Pocket PCs
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I tried this a few hours ago, I don’t know how we could live without it and why no operating system has this by default.
Yes, UIQ 3.0 has predictive text now (my Sony Ericsson M600i arrived just this morning and I was playing with it), but it’s not the same because you still have to press the characters one by one before you confirm if you want to use a suggested word or not.
The good feature of this software is that it can do the same job others need lots of keys to do, with just 6 keys. Your thumb/stylus doesn’t have to “travel” far, neither you have to be accurate where to press, and this is exactly what makes this software faster and easier to use than the rest solutions in the market.
I haven’t tried version 2 yet, but it seems to be dynamite too. I am using a PocketPC as my main phone (with a sliding qwerty keyboard in my case) but such software is still really godsend as it allows me to input text in the PDA with one hand.
Edited 2006-07-27 00:15
That’s truly cool. I doubt I can ever move that fast, but I bet it’s easier than the onscreen keyboard and bad character recognition!
Looks interesting. This would be nice to have on my Nokia 770. I can’t stand using the full qwerty with a stylus. I ‘ve been looking at alternative input methods. I found one called Dasher, but it seems impossible to use. Hopefully they’ll port TenGO to Linux and the Maemo platform.
Remember the on-screen-keyboard in Matrix Reloaded when the ship with Morpheus entered Zion. 3 people were sitting in some white control room and the “keys” they typed on (touchscreen). The keys were moving according to the text typed.
A shame only the English language is available.
It is possible to make the system learns new words for another language, but it is quite exhausting 🙂
I emailed the company a while back, and they said that other languages would be implemented. I have yet to hear anything about it though. I would drop any other input method in an instant if this was available in Danish.
2.0 has multilingual support. German, Spanish, Fresh, are the ones that are available.
BTW: amazing piece of software. Five minutes on my PocketPC and I’m typing faster than ever before.
Too bad, the video looks interesting and I would like to give it a try.