Motorola Plans Finger-Writing Phone

[Kris Kumar]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=974' target='_blank'>http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=974</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The FCC today approved the Motorola A668, a new tri-band GSM phone with a unique text-input technology called Finger Writing Recognition (FWR). The otherwise standard-looking keypad doubles as a touch surface, allowing users to trace English and Chinese characters with their finger to enter text."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/moto_a668.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/> <br /><br />Mike had posted an article talking about the Synaptics <a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6251">MobileTouch</a> technology for mobile devices. Now Phone Scoop is reporting that Motorola will be launching a phone that will enable the user to input text by tracing the text on the keypad-touchpad with their finger. You can see a demo of this technology <a href="http://www.synaptics.com/flash/mobto_demo.swf">here.</a> Would you like to have a similar <a href="http://www.synaptics.com/products/mobto.cfm">keypad-touchpad</a> on your next Smartphone?

[Mr.Phil]

I would judge this to be a greater boon to the Chinese market than the English market. Writing 26 different english characters with a finger? I'd rather T9 or EzTap, or foldout the Voq keypad. (Look at the low percentage of Palm/PPC users that use handwriting recognition) 200+ chinese characters? makes much more sense. That being said, I have a USB stylus touch pad for my laptop for inputting chinese characters, and the recognition ability is not so good (some characters take alot of stylus strokes!) Can't imagine doing that with a finger on an unstable surface (like holding a phone)

[Kris Kumar]

I would judge this to be a greater boon to the Chinese market than the English market. Writing 26 different english characters with a finger? I'd rather T9 or EzTap, or foldout the Voq keypad. (Look at the low percentage of Palm/PPC users that use handwriting recognition) 200+ chinese characters? makes much more sense.

I agree.

On my Pocket PC, even though it has very good handwriting recognition, I prefer the keypad.

I feel that it cannot be used for composing sentences. Or mails. The touch keypad has to be used in conjuction with the T9. I mean use the finger to trace the first 2-3 letters and pick and choose the word from the T9 list. But composing the whole word/sentence...no way! The only advantage the touch keypad offers is that you dont have to search for the button with "L" on it, out of the 12 buttons or so. It drives me nuts at times. I am pretty good at T9, but spend quite some time looking for the alphabets. So combination of T9 and finger writing might work.

And if it requires us to master some kind of graffiti strokes, then forget it.

[yslee]

Chinese, well, has strokes as the basic building block in the written part. The number of permutations and combinations is enough to make one go nuts. If it only was 200+ characters..