KALQ, fastest touchscreen keyboard till date, say researchers

We love our Android keyboards, don’t’ we. Now among our current favorites Swiftkey and Swype, a new keyboard is about make an entrance in the Google Play Store. This newcomer is called KALQ which aims to revolutionize typing by abandoning the good old QUERTY layout which was developed back in 1870 and used in typewriters.

Researchers at St. Andrew, who developed KALQ, claim that the old layout uses redundant single thumb tapping, puts a lot of strain on the typists and decreases speed and accuracy of typing. With KALQ’s new layout, users can expect their typing speeds to increase by a whopping 33 percent. The KALQ developers studied user’s thumb movements to determine optimal placement of the keys for better thumb movement, efficiency and comfortable typing. Furthermore, KALQ is designed to reduce long typing sequences by placing frequently used letter keys together.

KALQ uses a “computational optimization technique” where every vowel is assigned to the right and the letter Y is assigned to the left. Trained KALQ users have reportedly reached 37 words per min which is the highest typing speed for touchscreen keyboards to date. The KALQ keyboard will be available for download at the Google Play Store for android. Unfortunately, Iphone and ipad will be stuck with their boring stock keyboard as always.