Imprecise typing and fat fingers? Minuum keyboard app deals with it all

A keyboard that does not eat into half your screen. Take a moment to digest this. How would you feel if you could actually see the screen beyond the keyboard as you type? The guys over at Minnum have devised a way to restrict the mobile keyboard to the extreme lower half of the screen, without sacrificing speed and accuracy. The crowdfunding campaign for the keyboard has just come to an end with the project making 873 percent of the initial goal.

But wait, how do you manage to hit the keys you intend to if the keyboard is squeezed into such a small horizontal strip? That is the point, according to the makers of the keyboard. You can be as imprecise as you want and Minnum will still know exactly what you want to type.

The keyboard has a specialised auto-correction algorithm that interprets in real time “the difference between what you type and what you mean, getting it right even if you miss every single letter.” The smart auto-correction will correct your imprecise entering of text every single time.

Type away!

Minnum was inspired by a college project that looked to invent a better way of typing on touchscreen view without looking. In the video for its crowdfunding project, CEO Will Walmsley explains that the idea was to do away with the three tier keyboard, yet retain the essence of a QWERTY keyboard. There are tiers, but hardly so. The QWERTY format is still there since your eyes are so used to it. The typewriter kind of theme is just collapsed and squished.

The keyboard is supposed to be friendly for large fingers, throwing up magnification for precise typing. The keyboard is also moveable, so you can drag it around to the top or side of your screen, if need be.

The keyboard will be initially available only on Google Play, as the platform supports the ability for customising keyboards. People wanting the keyboard in iOS devices might have to wait it out as the Minnum team is looking to develop a version for iOS app developers to include in their software.

Interestingly, the team is looking to bring improved typing to the future of wearable computing. Since the keyboard is one dimensional – the letters are arranged in one row – it will be possible to type using Minnum on any kind of flat service.

“With Minuum you can type without any surface at all, simply by measuring the orientation of hand gestures in the air. This can be done in several ways, such as with an accelerometer/gyroscope in a ring, watch, armband, or handheld device, or with a camera capturing the hand from something like a Kinect, Leap Motion Controller, or Google glasses,” the company writes in its blog.

Minuum just concluded a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, raising $87,369 after putting out a $10,000 goal back last month. The backers of the crowdfunding project will receive their beta versions of the app in June, way before the rest of the world. Minuum is officially expected to hit Google Play Store by the end of this year.