MaxiKeys for Big Fingers!

Hmm.. I’m not sure about this thing..

A number of keyboard apps for Android smartphones are already available. Like the standard Android keyboard these keyboards have small keys and layouts, which necessitate toggling between layouts to access numbers and special characters. The Danish company Henneberg Consult has now developed the keyboard app, MaxiKeys, that is as simple and easy to use as a PC keyboard.

”I have seen young people write incredibly fast using two thumbs on their mobile, but what about the rest of us who aren’t able to hit the small keys? We spend a great deal of time making corrections, rotating the mobile to get a bigger view and searching for special characters. We often feel like throwing the thing out of the window, when the dictionary has written total garbage,” says Hardy Henneberg from Henneberg Consult, who is the developer of the new keyboard app.

Hardy Henneberg has been working on solving the problem of the small keyboard for some time and is now ready with a ground-breaking app for everyone, who is frustrated by not being able to find their way around their smartphone keyboard.

MaxiKeys keyboard is available from Google Play now.

A keyboard just like on a PC

The MaxiKeys app has the same layout as a PC keyboard. To achieve maximum size the whole keyboard is not shown at the same time. By tilting the telephone from side to side you control, which part of the keyboard is displayed. Movements are controlled by the smartphone’s built-in sensors, and it works best on newer Android smartphones, which have a ‘gyroscope’.

“If you require bigger keys and a keyboard, where there’s no need to rotate to landscape to see what’s going on, where you don’t have to toggle between keyboards to write numbers, and where the keys are where they usually are on your PC, MaxiKeys is the answer”, explains Hardy Henneberg.

“Our target customer is anyone, who uses a smartphone as a convenient tool. Who doesn’t want to waste time on learning a simple thing like inputting a text. Who would normally use a PC for writing big texts, and when they write on their smartphone, it is not just SMSs – but also texts, which have to be absolutely correct. They expect things to work very much like on a PC, so of course MaxiKeys has arrow keys, ‘repeat’, and select-copy-paste functionality“ continues Hardy Henneberg.

“We don’t see the other keyboard apps as competitors, because MaxiKeys has been designed from the ground-up as an alternative for users, who are not happy with conventional keyboards. If you are a fan of SwiftKey or Swype, or you can write very fast on the standard Android keyboard – MaxiKeys is probably not for you.“ concludes Hardy Henneberg.

Multilingual keyboard solutions

The MaxiKeys app comes with an international layout built-in. Other layouts – including US, UK, German, Spanish and Scandinavian languages – are available as separate apps, which are automatically connected to MaxiKeys. Henneberg Consult is currently working on keyboard layouts for many more languages.
Search for “maxikeys layout” on Google Play or take a look at the support site.

Facts:

Like other Android keyboards MaxiKeys use ´input intent´. So all apps that include an input field, will launch MaxiKeys, if it has been selected as the preferred keyboard. MaxiKeys is special however, because it uses the mobile telephone’s sensors: the accelerometer and the ‘gyroscope’ (if the mobile is equipped with one) for controlling an OpenGL window, which displays a section of the layout bitmap. MaxiKeys has another special function – it also uses ´intent´ to link layouts to the keyboard app. This means, anyone can produce a new layout for MaxiKeys. Such a layout is an independent app, which can be sold via Google Play.