Rethinking the smartphone keyboard

The Typewise keyboard is shaped like a honeycomb, with larger letters positioned more vertically than on traditional keyboards. The Swiss deep tech start-up Typewise, founded in 2019 in Zurich, claims that this design cuts the number of typos made when typing by a factor of four and improves the speed of writing by 2-3 times. The conventional keyboard was created 140 years ago for typewriters. We all experience this daily: typing is rather slow and frequent typos are frustrating. The hexagonal keyboard design from Typewise is designed for two-thumbed typing on touchscreens, which increases the accuracy and speed of typing.

But Typewise is not just a more convenient keyboard for smartphone users, it is above all equipped with an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) engine, enabling it to automatically detect the language a person is writing in and adapt to it. In addition, an AI-powered text and sentence prediction solution allows people to write emails, replies and documents up to three times faster. This AI technology was developed together with engineers from ETH Zurich. In the course of this, a study was conducted that looked at the typing behaviour of 37,000 participants. It showed, for example, that suggesting words does not speed up the typing experience if the user has to tap the suggested word manually. The situation is different with automatically corrected or completed words. Therefore, Typewise has chosen this approach and implemented a new AI-powered text and sentence prediction solution.

The Typewise keyboard has already been downloaded worldwide more than 1.7 million times and the user base is constantly growing. In addition to the increased typing speed, Typewise also claims to respect the privacy of users better, as no data from the keyboard is shared to the cloud. Having gathered a large user base, the Zurich-based start-up decided last year to further expand their operations with a crowdfunding campaign. In just 24 hours, more than EUR 1 million was raised in 2021. At the end of the crowdfunding a total investment of EUR 1.7 million from more than 650 investors was reported, surpassing the goal of EUR 860,000.

The innovative keyboard from Switzerland has not gone unnoticed on the global technology stage. Together with swiss.tech, Typewise participated for the second year in a row at CES in Las Vegas from 5-7 January 2022 and won the CES Innovation Award for the second year running.

A desktop version is currently being launched in closed beta, which utilises Typewises's advanced text prediction and autocorrect AI for desktop computers. Thanks to the desktop version, individuals and enterprises will be able to compose emails, messages and documents more quickly and accurately and consequently boost productivity