Gadgetory

so 8-pin wasn't the answer to our mobile typing woes however there is another non traditional keyboard on the market hi I'm Taylor Martin this is pocket now and this is the menu on keyboard a few months back we explored an idea while touchscreen typing is better than it's ever been before thanks to trace typing and predictive text we're not convinced the standard layouts that work so well on physical keyboards are the best solution for typing on a touchscreen so I spent a week using the rotary style 8-pin keyboard that was built on some interesting science by the end of that week I realized 8-pin at least in its current form was not the answer in the video I also mentioned one other non-traditional keyboard min youum at the time the minimum project was still seeking funding as an IndieGoGo campaign so it wasn't available for download yesterday however the private beta for IndieGoGo backers kicked off and I instantly dropped what I was doing to install the keyboard but first what is min youum like the creators of 8-pin the minds behind minimum question why we still use an age-old key layout that was first implemented on typewriters why should we still use this layout who says there isn't a better faster more efficient method for inputting text on a touch screen there are even a few problems with existing soft keyboards even the ones we've come to love like swype swiftkey and even the stock google keyboard they're big and take up anywhere from one third to over one half of the display they also require a certain level of accuracy which means you have to choose between either accuracy or speed unless of course you've mastered mobile typing are living in denial and believe mobile keyboards don't need to be improved any further minium aims to solve both of these problems the layout is actually nothing more than a qwerty keyboard smashed down into a single staggered row and it takes no special training to type just a min the general area of the key you want and tap and proceed to the next letter the hard part is learning to type in a single dimension remembering that QA and z are all in approximately the same area if you take out the vertical dimension to space you can slide your finger to the right within the keyboard area or enable the spacebar beneath to type a word isn't in minn um standard dictionary or inter a symbol simply press and hold near the letter or symbol you want and drag towards it swipe to the right and up for the return key to the left to delete the last word and to the left and up for settings finally for quicker access to symbols and numbers swipe downward on the keyboard you have to learn to trust the keyboard to trust that if you hit approximately where the letters are it will suggest the right word and just in case it gets it wrong which does happen occasionally it offers some alternate suggestions as well that's where we've had the most trouble with men youum there have been some instances where we've been typing too fast to catch the incorrect suggestions on the fly and our sentences sometimes don't exactly make sense the upside is that correcting the incorrect word is done by tapping it and selecting the proper word in other words you do not have to worry about typing everything correctly the first time so long as you remember to quickly glance through what you've typed before you hit Send we've only managed to spend a short time typing and toying with min youum but we're definitely impressed no it isn't perfect but this is only the first beta and it's already on a very positive track that said there are a few things we'd like to see added such as the ability to learn your typing habits from Twitter or Facebook and now standard feature on many third-party Android keyboards but in its current form it does exactly as the development team promises it allows fast sloppy typing with large fingers and takes up only a small fraction of the display we're excited to see where this team will take this keyboard because of its versatility and scalability the team hopes to apply the same technology too much more than just smartphones namely wearable computers and other miniscule devices it will take some more time to tell for sure but minium arte seems to be a keyboard we could see ourselves using day in and day out be sure to give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and you want to see more videos like this one and don't forget to subscribe and follow us in all the typical places twitter google+ and facebook at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech i'll see you next time