The 12 button keypad is a 50 year old design that remains on 95% of phones sold today. It serves as a barrier to discovery, access and use of wireless devices and mobile data services.
Fastap keypad technology is a new keypad design that simplifies the way users can use their cell phones. The works like this: There are little black buttons that rise up from the keypad for letters or one button features, and underneath those little black buttons are the regular numbers we see and use every day. The techonlogy “knows” when you are trying to hit a letter or number and decides for you. If you’re trying to dial “1” and your finger hits the letter “A” and “1”, the phone will automatically decide that you’re trying to hit the number. If you hit two letters at the same time, the number inbetween the letters will be selected.
We got to put our hands on this new technology at CTIA Wireless and we were nothing short of impressed. The keypad worked exactly as Fastap told us it would. It was just as easy to write an email to someone as it was on a full QWERTY keyboard! This is a great idea to bring users to actually use data services on a normal cell phone. The technology can be implemented on any type of phone and as far as we can tell, it will. I’ve definitely been out of the candy bar and flip phone market for quite a while, just because data services on these phones can get really frustrating. If you’ve been waiting for an answer to that frustartion, here it is.
Fastap [product page]