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.

That's the standard touch-tone layout

[metageek.livejournal.com]

You won't find anybody who doesn't have that layout of letters. It's derived from the standard touch-tone layout (dating back to 1960); the only change is adding Q and X in the obvious places.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

This is a phone from like 2001, though.

[yukirien.livejournal.com]

My answers were given by a Motorola slide phone. The phone I used for texting in France was a bit different in what 1, #, *, and 0 would do. I remembered never using 1 or 0, because it didn't really do anything important. # controlled all changes in capitalization and to punctuation and to numbers while * gave spaces. I never use texting in the US though, but I also never really use my cell phone at all in the US.

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

Just a side thought. I always thought if I could have an alternate entry method to the semi standard keyboard described, I'd me much happier.

What if only 1 2 and 3 worked? I could easily hover my thumb over three buttons without looking. My starter options are something like

1:A-I, 2:J-R, 3:S-" "

I choose 2 and get another menu
1:J-L, 2:M-O, 3:P-R

I choose 2 again and get
1:M, 2:N, 3:O

And 1 get me an M.

Every letter and a space are just three clicks of three keys away. (3^3).

Sure, it looks kind of complex, but it's no more of a learning curve for me than trying to always figure out the little letters under the little numbers.

[johno.livejournal.com]

Moto Razr