SMS Poll

[jducoeur]

Okay, here's an odd-sounding question for all those of you who use SMS, aka text messaging from your phone -- specifically, those who have ordinary cell phones with normal number pads, not full keyboards. (Those of us with Treos are assumed to not be the usual case.)

We're trying to come up with a concise and easy-to-type SMS syntax -- which means I need to check out what's actually easy to type. So I'd like to know what's under your buttons. If you could take a minute or two to look at your phone and answer this, I'd appreciate it.

I think of the "common" mobile-phone letter layout as being:

• 2: abc


• 3: def


• 4: ghi


• 5: jkl


• 6: mno


• 7: pqrs


• 8: tuv


• 9: wxyz

[Poll #1089759]

Comments

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

My answers may be slightly off "standard" because I have Sprint's "intuitive" texting turned on - they call it "Word English" it's supposed to figure out what I'm saying and fix it without me having to hit letters twice - ie I can hit 8398 and it'll figure out I mean "text" instead of "tdwt", etc. Punctuation is much the same... It's a Razr, and I suppose they're pretty common - certainly something like 50% of my friends have one.

Predictive text

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is actually pretty standard these days. I'd be surprised to see any system that doesn't support predictive text getting any significant traction.

Re: Predictive text

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

True, just wasn't sure whether that would throw off the poll...

Re: Predictive text

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the split between raw typing (of any sort) and predictive text makes it hard to come up with a syntax that's easy for everybody.

[siderea]

Oh. I have a Razr. I didn't know that. Huh.

[jducoeur]

Good point. I have no idea how predictive texting is likely to screw us up, but it's something worth thinking about...