Smartphone Keypad Typing Tips

Composing your messages on a phone keypad doesn't have to be painful. Most handsets make it pretty easy, but the easy way is sometimes obscure.

Typing on the small keypad is always the challenge for mobile phone messaging. Some Nokia smartphones, such as the 6800/6820 in Series 40 and 9300/9500 in Series 80, are equipped with fold-out QWERTY keyboards. Those devices are ideal for messaging and enterprise applications.

For Nokia Series 60 smartphones, it is often possible to use an external keyboard. The Nokia Wireless Keyboard is a full-size, foldable keyboard that works over Bluetooth. Only Nokia 7610 and newer Series 60 smartphones are officially supported by this keyboard, but Nokia 6600 is also known to work. Besides Nokia's own offerings, the Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard (http://www.thinkoutside.com/) is another choice. The Think Outside keyboard supports older Nokia Series 60 devices such as the Nokia 3600 and 3650.

While keyboards are nice, most mobile phone users still need to rely on the keypad to enter messages. In this hack, I will cover several important techniques to improve text input on regular smartphone keypads.