4 ms·
t9 was AMAZING and i miss it every day. faster and more accurate than swype for sure, especially since inputs for t9 are deterministic. very easy to text even
by gr3yh47 10y ago
t9 was AMAZING and i miss it every day. faster and more accurate than swype for sure, especially since inputs for t9 are deterministic.
very easy to text even from your pocket etc - something you cant do on a smartphone - notice texting accidents became more common with the widespread adaptation of smartphones ;)
- StavrosK 10y agoNote that you're comparing a touchscreen to tactile keys in that statement too, though. I could text from my pocket without T9, but try doing that with a touchscreen WITH T9...
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAnd while we're doing that touch vs. tactile comparison, what I also loved about the old "dumb phones" was deterministic timing. I could do stuff on those phones from start to end without looking at the screen - I quickly learned and remembered that e.g. this operation completed instantly, and that menu has ~1/4 of loading time, etc. I think this feature was actually key to being able to memorize how to perform operations quickly. There's no way you can do that with modern smartphone, where every other interaction lags for anything between 10 and 1000 ms, and inputs are sometimes dropped at random. It's this non-determinism of smartphone UI that makes me look at the screen all the time when using it.
- StavrosK 10y agoI think this is actually because of the changing interface. It doesn't matter how long the interface takes to be ready if the keystrokes are buffered (which they were), so you could press "menu down down down ok" and the thing would work, even if the menu took two seconds to show up. You can't do that when you have to actually wait for the thing you want to select to show, otherwise you'll be selecting something completely different.
- nitrogen 10y agoI am really hoping that we reach peak touchscreen soon, and companies can start exploring other form factors again. I want a fast CPU and wifi in something that isn't just a giant flat slab of glass.
- StavrosK 10y agoHaven't we already?
- angli 10y agoTexting also became more common with the widespread adoption of smartphones - we'd of course see more accidents as a result, but the medium became massively more useful to a lot more people.
- stuaxo 10y agoYes, give me some bloody buttons on my phone. I guess I'll need to wait until shape changing tactile surfaces come to phone screens, which might be a while / never.