Show HN: A 2-row, 16-key keyboard designed for smartphones

Posted by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Mobile keyboards today are almost entirely based on the 26-key, 3-row QWERTY layout. Here’s a new 2-row, 16-key alternative designed specifically for smartphones.

Comments

Comment by MontyCarloHall 5 days ago

Smartphone keyboards dynamically adjust the "hitbox" of each key based on what's previously been typed and overall letter frequencies of the language. So when typing "Paris is the capital of Fr..." [*], the A key becomes much easier to hit than its neighbors. Fun fact: back in the day, when this tech was less refined, certain letter contexts made the hitboxes of some keys effectively nonexistent [0].

I wonder if an approach like KKeyboard with larger but statically combined keys leads to faster typing than the current approach with smaller but dynamically "combined" keys.

[*] In reality, the context is modeled using a simple Hidden Markov Model with a much smaller effective context window that could not associate "Paris" and "France." But you get the idea.

[0] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/impossible-to-type-okee...

Comment by browningstreet 5 days ago

Not successfully though. Half the time I hit b or n in place of space. I can type numerous words before I notice. I've thought about just making a new iPhone keyboard app with just a big space bar.

The iPhone keyboard is the least successful tech I use each day.

Comment by mbirth 5 days ago

I did a fun experiment once to confirm it’s not me sausage-fingering but the stupid iOS keyboard. There’s an app called xKeyboard which lets you design your own keyboard. I remade the FITALY[0] keyboard in it and even though the keys are slightly smaller than on the original iOS keyboard, I can type without making any error. Yet the iOS keyboard often detects the wrong key because of those stupid hitboxes. I wish there was a way to turn them off.

[0] https://www.fitaly.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm

Comment by egypturnash 5 days ago

godnyesninhatenthatnthenphonenhasnnonideanhowntonautocorrectnoutnofnwhatnmustnbenancommonnerrornatnall

Comment by rationalist 5 days ago

I always make the same typos in Gboard. I don't know if they adjust the hotboxes based on common letter sequences, but it would be nice if they adjusted it based on people's typing performance.

Comment by xattt 4 days ago

Interesting to note is how much typing accuracy decreases if you enable dual-language single-keyboard typing (e.g. Eng + Fr) on an iPhone, since targets end up having to account for two separate dictionaries.

Comment by happymellon 4 days ago

Unfortunately thats not correct.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo

Comment by walterbell 5 days ago

Need Liquid Keys to make this behavior visible, which will lead to requests for turning it off, joining the iOS Accessibility Settings Hall of {F|Sh}ame.

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Thanks for the thoughtful point! Hitbox behavior is largely constrained by OS -level policies from the manufacturers, so major improvements on that side are difficult for now. At this stage, I'm mainly trying to evaluate the layout and the input method itself - and hopefully, in the future, issues like hitbox tuning can be improved as well.

Comment by rerdavies 5 days ago

Not it's not.

Comment by QWERTYmini 3 days ago

I’m not sure if this fully answers the question, but so far increasing the key size alone has worked well, with no noticeable hitbox issues.

Comment by quamserena 5 days ago

Omg I thought this was just me. How do I turn this off? On iOS, this has been bugging me for a long time.

Comment by devmor 5 days ago

I would love a way to turn it off as well, this is the source of the majority of my annoying typos.

Comment by sushisource 5 days ago

Seriously this explains so much. I thought I was going crazy, or just becoming an old man who can't type on a phone any more.

Comment by shakna 5 days ago

There is no builtin setting in iOS to disable it. However most 3rd party keyboards don't have it, as implementing it without OS support is a huge pain.

Comment by nneonneo 4 days ago

Why is it hard? In principle you render an image instead of discrete buttons, and do your hit testing manually. Sure, it’s more annoying than just having your OS tell you what key got hit, but keyboard makers are doing way fancier stuff just fine (e.g. Swype).

Comment by shakna 4 days ago

Apple's keyboard receives more information, to put it simply. It doesn't get told that a touch was at a particular point, but the entire fuzzy area. Allowing you to use circular occlusion and other things to choose between side-by-side buttons and override the predictive behaviour when it is the wrong choice.

A third-party maker gets a single point - usually several in short succession, but still it requires more math to work out where the edges of the finger are pressing, to help determine which direction you're moving. So most just... Don't.

Comment by jrmg 4 days ago

Are you aware of the `majorRadius` and `majorRadiusTolerance` UITouch properties?

Comment by shakna 4 days ago

Apple's software gets the actual mapping matrix that those use.

Comment by yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago

I'm not following.

* Does this still expect you to hit every key but some of them need multiple taps?

* Are they doing fancy autocorrect-like magic to decide which letter you meant, and if so why use this instead of taking it one more step and using http://minuum.com/ ?

* Or is it something else?

Comment by sublinear 5 days ago

I just tried this out, and the need to double-tap was a total deal breaker making words like "success" a failure.

The other problem with the way this double tapping works is that I encountered missed spaces or other weirdness if I type too quickly. It's as if it's having trouble detecting new keydown events when another key is still down for a split second.

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

There is, understandably, a slight delay with double-tapping, so using simultaneous key presses can help improve speed when typing quickly. Thank you for your feedback.

Comment by sublinear 5 days ago

Sorry if I was unclear, but that's the opposite of what I'm saying. It feels as if simultaneous keypresses are not working once I type faster than a certain speed because of the way double tapping is implemented.

I think I'd prefer tap and hold for the secondary character. Right now spelling is getting totally mangled no matter the technique of the user.

Comment by QWERTYmini 4 days ago

Since tap-and-hold has a longer delay, wouldn’t it be more suitable as a method for various extended characters in the multilingual versions? I will check whether there is any interference between simultaneous input and double-tap and take the necessary actions. Thank you for the feedback.

Comment by davtbaum 5 days ago

yeah, I agree. It feels pretty rough to me. On older feature phones, you could accelerate this with a right arrow key which would lock to the key for key duplicates like 'cc' in success. Definitely feels like this needs a dedicated key for doing that

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Yes, all characters are entered with tap or double-tap, and it also supports simultaneous taps as an advanced option. It’s fully local, with no autocorrect or prediction. Minuum compresses QWERTY into one row, but QWERTY mini keeps the QWERTY structure to preserve the familiar typing experience. Thanks for your interest!

Comment by yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago

So like, to type "x" a person would hit the dx key twice?

I guess that's better for precise typing, but for normal prose it's probably faster+easier to just type blindly and let the machine figure out what you mean.

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Both with- and without-autocorrect have their pros and cons. This layout could also work well if predictive features are added later.

Comment by onli 5 days ago

This could be a good alternative to Minuum when mixed together. The single line was great in theory, but in practice I often preferred the regular keyboard layout. Maybe the autopredict did not work all that well, at least with the multiple languages I mixed then? Going to two lines might improve it, and devices are bigger now than back then.

Comment by iszomer 4 days ago

Blast from the past using Minuum on a Nexus 4, my second Android smartphone from my first with the O.G. Motorola Droid.

Comment by onli 4 days ago

Some old Galaxy phone for me I think. And then I used it a bit on an LG G3. Only regular app I ever bought (the one other purchase was a game, https://egamebook.com/knights/).

But it must have been great for the small Nexus 4.

Comment by morsch 5 days ago

I mean for one thing Minuum is dead, the play store link is 404 and the last time I tried it it didn't work perfectly with recent Android versions. Which is sad because it was great when it was still maintained.

Comment by nullpilot 5 days ago

I believe Minuum is the only app I ever paid for on the Play Store, after having followed it since the Kickstarter campaign. It was the only option that made typing on a small touchscreen feel mostly frictionless for me, contrary to the varying degrees of frustration of other options. As a result, I now hardly type on my phone.

Comment by yjftsjthsd-h 5 days ago

That's odd, it works fine on my Android 15 phone.

Comment by AAAAaccountAAAA 5 days ago

Looks nice. Reminds me of MessagEase[1] and clones, such as ThumbKey[2]. I use the latter for my mobile text input needs. However, that method is sometimes prone to typos, since one key may have up to 9 different characters assigned to it, and it is easy to swipe slightly wrong way. QWERTYmini could be better in that aspect, since there are only 2 characters per key.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagEase

2. https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key

Comment by pshirshov 5 days ago

Also this: https://codeberg.org/natkr/flickboard

Comment by teach 5 days ago

You might want to throw a CDN in front of this -- the site is realllllly struggling and seems very complex under the hood.

Cool idea though.

Comment by mgr86 5 days ago

I threw it at archive.is for them.

https://archive.is/gW1rO

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Thanks for archiving it ^^

really appreciate the help!

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Thanks for letting me know! The website isn’t optimized yet, so it’s running slower than usual. I’ll work on improving it soon. Really appreciate your interest!

Comment by rcarmo 5 days ago

Hmmm. Cute. I use a Bluehand (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/08/08/1230), which is physical and has... half the keys, but that relies on chording. I might take a look at the idea of doing a 20-key physical keyboard that looks like this.

Comment by davtbaum 5 days ago

Just tried it out, how do you accelerate disambiguating a double key 'nn' in 'dinner' vs alternate? This doesn't feel very usable compared to the existing keyboard to me

Comment by stevage 5 days ago

I don't really understand how people manage to type with two thumbs while holding their phone securely. I use my left thumb and my right index finger, with my right thumb supporting the base of the phone.

Comment by wffurr 5 days ago

I use my left pinky to hold the base of the phone. Lots of people with bigger phones use one of those stick on things on the back and hold it with their index and middle finger.

Comment by rtkwe 5 days ago

+1 for the pinky phone shelf. Worked better when phones were smaller and lighter now I have a popsocket on the back and hold it either between the middle and index or middle and ring depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes with middle and index the pinky comes out again to stabilize the phone too.

Comment by Krastan 5 days ago

Were you inspired by thumb key at all? https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key

Comment by thebeardisred 5 days ago

I noticed "International patent (PCT/KR2025/099177), International Publication "

Are you truly seeking a software patent for this? If so what is the plan for leveraging ownership over the patent?

Comment by QWERTYmini 3 days ago

Good question. I’m not entirely sure about its value yet. It was done to continue development without legal uncertainty, and it’s mainly a defensive measure.

Comment by schainks 5 days ago

Reminds me of the abominable parking ticket machine keyboards in Rome (https://www.wantedinrome.com/i/cover/storage/uploads/2018/12...)

Comment by ugh123 5 days ago

Seems like there's 25% wasted space at the bottom for the language globe icon that could be used for something useful

Comment by QWERTYmini 5 days ago

Good point. I’m not sure why Apple designed it that way either. Anyway, the globe icon area is required by the OS, so its size can’t be reduced. Thanks for the feedback!

Comment by Semaphor 4 days ago

Do people often thumb letters instead of swiping? And why? Coding or other stuff where you don't have natural language?

For her swiping (or glide typing) is the only thing making mobile phones somewhat usable, but I also encounter people who haven't even heard of that feature.

Comment by procinct 4 days ago

I usually just type with two thumbs and can type pretty quickly. Swiping always felt a bit awkward to me because my phone is too large to use one handed with one thumb swiping, and swiping with a finger felt awkward compared to just holding my phone in both hands and typing with both thumbs.

I imagine if you look at how most young people use their phone, it will mostly be the two thumb method and they will likely be very quick with it.

Comment by Semaphor 4 days ago

Hm. Hadn't thought about size. I always make sure to get a phone that I can use one-handed, but I guess big phones are far more popular.

Comment by mmh0000 5 days ago

I really dislike how iOS handles dictation as a keyboard feature.

I want to try this keyboard, but I also don't want to give up dictation. If I have to switch back to the iOS keyboard to enable dictation, that's just enough friction that I'm not going to move to something else.

Comment by postoplust 5 days ago

Site seems down, try https://archive.is/gW1rO

Comment by patrulek 3 days ago

Not usable for me because im using "snake/slide typing".

Comment by Gys 4 days ago

i tried it and think it needs at least three improvements for me to use it:

normally a sentence starts automatically with a capital but not with this keyboard

double space should result in a dot and a space, to end a sentence. Now I need to switch layout for a dot

automatic suggestions are not enabled (or implemented)

Comment by gxonatano 4 days ago

It strikes me as a little unimaginative to want to improve on smartphone software keyboards but (1) stick with QWERTY, a layout designed to be inefficient, and (2) require multiple taps to enter some letters. It seems like you've invented a way to make smartphone typing even more of a pain than it already is.

Comment by 2earth 5 days ago

Nice idea, I might try it!

Comment by toast0 5 days ago

It's still 2025, so that's fine :P post-Berne Convention, there are no forms required for copyright protection to vest, merely fixing the work upon a medium is sufficient.

Comment by Xiol 5 days ago

So vibe coded slop that clearly hasn't been reviewed is going to have access to all my input.

Interesting idea, but that's a pass from me.

Comment by highwind 5 days ago

I like it but I wish I can change the size of the keyboard. Buttons are too small on my phone.

Comment by 5 days ago

Comment by chente 5 days ago

Reminds of T9 texting and I did like T9. I'll have to try this.

Comment by axiolite 4 days ago

I call BS. NOBODY ever LIKED to type on T9. Maybe you well-tolerated it. Maybe you got reasonably good at it. But not LIKED. There's a reason text messaging really took over when smartphones came in... because T9 was no longer needed. It was objectively awful.

Comment by jefurii 4 days ago

My old Sony Ericsson T616 was inferior to my smartphone in so many ways, but I could tap out SMS messages on that keypad without having to look at it. It was handy to be able to take notes on long drives.

Comment by chente 4 days ago

My brother is Christ, call BS all you WANT. This is T9-esque and we have comments in here being interested in going away from full keyboards on their phones in favor of cramming multiple letters onto buttons and letting the software do it again. Time is a flat circle and all that.

Comment by tomtomistaken 5 days ago

Looks nice. Can I swipe write with it?