Fleksy used to break Guinness World Record for fastest typing on a smartphone

By Williams Pelegrin May 15, 2014

teenager types lightning speed smashes guinness world record fastest texter fleksy fleksyrecord1

If you text Brazilian teenager Marcel Fernandes on a daily basis, you might be used to his lightning-fast responses. For the rest of us, we’re just finding out about his typing prowess. Fleksy has told us that Fernandes used its keyboard to break the Guinness World Record for Fastest Texting.

Fernandes broke the record with a time of 18.19 seconds, which made Fleksy the fastest smartphone keyboard in the world, something that Fleksy founder and COO Loannis Verdelis is very happy about.

“We’ve been passionate about building the most comfortable, beautiful, and fastest smartphone keyboard ever since we started,” said Verdelis. “The Guinness World Record is a great testament to our progress, and we are pleased that our latest improvements make Fleksy the world’s fastest keyboard for smartphones.” The previous record holder was Microsoft, which nabbed the record with the Windows Phone 8.1 keyboard in a head-to-head battle with the Galaxy S4.

Fleksy issued updates for its keyboard for iOS and Android. While the iOS version now features six new languages, the Android version includes a World Record Challenge. Through it, users can try to beat the new world record and win badges and prizes in the process of doing so.

Meanwhile, Fernandes, the kid behind the record, has an interesting story as to how he started using smartphone keyboards. In 2009, when he was 13, the monitor for his Dell desktop began to flicker and turn off by itself. Eventually, Fernandes took a hammer and broke his monitor, having to resort to using his iPhone 3GS since he had no money to buy a new one. While he would occasionally use his mom’s laptop for homework, he used his iPhone for just about everything else.

As for whether he had ever seen himself as a Guinness World Record holder, Fernandes never imagined himself being one. “Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by Guinness World Records,” said Fernandes in a short interview. “I would read the books and search the Internet for interesting records. I never imagined I would someday be a Guinness World Record holder.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Williams Pelegrin

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…

Mobile

Snapchat update adds a color-changing brush, lets you record longer videos

Snapchat

A few months ago, Snapchat introduced "limitless" snaps -- snaps that don't have a time constraint along with looping videos -- as well as the "magic eraser" that removes objects from photos. More recently Snap Map and the ability to create custom geofilters straight through the Snapchat app were added as well. On Tuesday, the company tacked on yet another new update -- multi-Snap recording and the Tint Brush -- allowing users to easily record more content and edit the video afterward.

By holding down the capture button on the app, users can now record up to six 10 second snaps in a row. The new Tint Brush inside the Scissors tool changes the color of your shirt, hair, or any other object you'd like. The multi-snap recording feature is rolling out on iOS first and will soon be available for Android, but the Tint Brush is launching for both operating systems right away, TechCrunch notes.

Mobile

Don’t touch that email! Marketers use tracking tech to record online behavior

email tracking online how to find sellers google 0001

In this day and age, no one's a stranger to email. The world's most popular form of peer-to-peer messaging reached new heights in 2015, when users sent and received a collective 205 billion emails. Its growth isn't slowing down anytime soon -- analysts at the Radicati Group project that email users will exchange as many as 246 billion messages in 2019.

But there's a downside to email's ubiquity, and it has to do with privacy. Increasingly, senders use web beacons -- tracking objects in a web page or email -- to collect information about the people who receive them.
Invasive tracking
One common tactic involves embedding one-by-one pixel images, called "clear GIFs," in the footer, header, or attachments of a message, which forces web browsers to download the image from a web server. The server collects gobs of information in the process, including the date, the physical location of the device that opened it, the length of time the message was open, the number of times it was subsequently opened, the pages that were opened when the message was displayed, and even the people who'd been forwarded the message beforehand.

Mobile

Tips for buying a used smartphone

idc smartphone popularity 33714561 buy used

The best smartphones pack tempting features into stylish bodies, but they don't come cheap. You can easily spend upwards of $600 on a new smartphone -- the Samsung Galaxy S8 starts at $750, for instance -- but you don’t have to clean out your bank account to nab a snazzy smartphone. Buying a used device is a tried-and-true method of saving cash on a purchase.

In this guide, we’re going to lay out your options and run through some tips for buying a used smartphone, helping ensure you don’t get ripped off. Not all second-hand smartphones are created equal, so let’s break this down by category.
Buying refurbished smartphones
The best kind of used smartphone to go for is a refurbished phone. These are phones that were returned to the manufacturer for one reason or another. They are fully tested, factory reset, and certified. They also usually come with some kind of warranty. When you buy a refurbished phone, it should be close to the experience of buying a new phone.