A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the input of characters without the need for physical keys. Interaction with a virtual keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface, but can also take place in a different form when in virtual or augmented reality.
FITALY is a keyboard layout specifically optimized for stylus or touch-based input. The design places the most common letters closest to the centre to minimize distance travelled while entering a word. The name, FITALY, is derived from the letters occupying the second row in the layout.
A text entry interface or text entry device is an interface that is used to enter text information in an electronic device. A commonly used device is a mechanical computer keyboard. Most laptop computers have an integrated mechanical keyboard, and desktop computers are usually operated primarily using a keyboard and mouse. Devices such as smartphones and tablets mean that interfaces such as virtual keyboards and voice recognition are becoming more popular as text entry systems.
The HTC Touch Pro is a smart phone from the Touch series of Internet-enabled Windows Mobile Pocket PC smartphones designed and marketed by HTC Corporation of Taiwan. It is an enhanced version of the HTC Touch Diamond with the addition of a left-side slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a microSD card slot, and a camera flash. The Touch Pro smartphone's functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player in addition to text messaging and multimedia messaging. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, instant messaging, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. Depending on its market, it is a quad-band GSM or quad-band UMTS phone with GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, and HSUPA or a tri-band CDMA phone with 1xEV-DO Rev A. All versions feature TouchFLO 3D — a new enhanced version of the TouchFLO interface, unique only to the latest Touch series. In March 2009, HTC announced a new version, the Touch Pro2 which has a larger screen (3.6") and a redesigned slide out QWERTY keyboard with spaces between the keys.
The HTC Dream is a smartphone developed by HTC. First released in October 2008 for $179 with a 2-year contract to T-Mobile, the Dream was the first commercially released device to use the Linux-based Android operating system, which was purchased and further developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance to create an open competitor to other major smartphone platforms of the time, such as Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and iPhone OS. The operating system offers a customizable graphical user interface, integration with Google services such as Gmail, a notification system that shows a list of recent messages pushed from apps, and Android Market for downloading additional apps.
Swype was a virtual keyboard for touchscreen smartphones and tablets originally developed by Swype Inc., founded in 2002, where the user enters words by sliding a finger or stylus from the first letter of a word to its last letter, lifting only between words. It uses error-correction algorithms and a language model to guess the intended word. It also includes a predictive text system, handwriting and speech recognition support. Swype was first commercially available on the Samsung Omnia II running Windows Mobile, and was originally pre-loaded on specific devices.
The HTC Touch Pro2 is a slate smartphone, part of the Touch series of Internet-enabled, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC smartphones designed and marketed by HTC Corporation of Taiwan. It is an enhanced version of the HTC Touch Pro with a left-side slide-out QWERTY keyboard, with tilting screen. The Touch Pro2 smartphone's functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player in addition to text messaging and multimedia messaging. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, instant messaging, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. Visual voicemail is not a standard feature for the Touch Pro2, unlike its predecessor the Touch Pro. The Verizon Wireless version does include a visual voicemail application, however. All versions feature TouchFLO 3D — a new enhanced version of the TouchFLO interface, unique only to the latest Touch series. The latest update renamed TouchFLO 3D to SenseUI, to match HTC's Android offering. The Touch Pro2 — along with its sister model, the Touch Diamond2 — were unveiled on February 16, 2009 in Barcelona, Spain at the Mobile World Congress 2009. Specific enhancements over the original Touch Pro include:
The form factor of a mobile phone is its size, shape, and style, as well as the layout and position of its major components.
Dvorak is a keyboard layout for English patented in 1936 by August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, William Dealey, as a faster and more ergonomic alternative to the QWERTY layout. Dvorak proponents claim that it requires less finger motion and as a result reduces errors, increases typing speed, reduces repetitive strain injuries, or is simply more comfortable than QWERTY.
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.
Bengali input methods refer to different systems developed to type the characters of the Bengali script for Bengali language and others, using a typewriter or a computer keyboard.
The T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide is a smartphone designed and manufactured by HTC, and sold by T-Mobile USA. HTC's name for the device during development was Espresso. The 3G Slide was unveiled by T-Mobile USA on May 4, 2010, pre-orders began May 23, 2010 and the device went on sale June 2, 2010.
Adaptxt is a predictive text application for mobile phones, developed by KeyPoint Technologies, a UK-based software company. The application is designed to improve text entry on mobile devices by making it faster and error-free. It achieves this by predicting the next word as well as the word being typed, continuously adapting to the user's writing style and vocabulary.
ETAOI keyboard is a text input software for touch screen-reliant devices. It is based on ETAOI method for coding.
Microsoft SwiftKey is a virtual keyboard app originally developed by TouchType for Android and iOS devices. It was first released for Android in July 2010, followed by an iOS release in September 2014 following Apple's implementation of third-party keyboard support.
Fleksy is a third-party, proprietary virtual keyboard app for Android and iOS devices. It attempts to improve traditional typing speed and accuracy through enhanced auto-correction and gesture controls. Fleksy uses error-correcting algorithms that analyze the region where the user touches the keyboard and feeds this through a language model, which calculates and identifies the intended word. Swiping gestures are used to control common functions, such as space, delete, and word correction.
Swarachakra is a free text input application developed by the IDIN group at Industrial Design Center (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay for Indic scripts. Swarachakra's alphabetical keyboard layout performed better than the Inscript layout. Currently, it is available for Android devices in twelve languages.
MessagEase is an input method and virtual keyboard for touchscreen devices. It relies on a new entry system designed by Saied B. Nesbat, formatted as a 3x3 matrix keypad where users may press or swipe up, down, left, right, or diagonally to access all keys and symbols. It is a keyboard that was designed for devices like cell phones, mimicking the early cell phones' limited number of 12 keys.
Colemak is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets, designed to make typing more efficient and comfortable than QWERTY by placing the most frequently used letters of the English language on the home row while keeping many common keyboard shortcuts the same as in QWERTY. Created on 1 January 2006, it is named after its inventor, Shai Coleman.
Typewise is a Swiss deep tech company that builds text prediction AI. In January 2022, the company filed a patent for its technology which it claims outperforms that of Google's and Apple's.
