Many of us pride ourselves on being able to text while walking or while out at a bar, but one teenager has the best brag of all — he is now officially the world’s fastest texter.
Using Fleksy, a keyboard app, Marcel Fernandes broke the old record and carved himself a place in history in the Guinness Book of World Records. And he did it while typing, not swiping.
Fernandes, a 16-year-old from Brazil, typed out a 25-word paragraph in 18.19 seconds on April 25. The previous record was set in January by Gaurav Sharma, a 15-year-old from Seattle. Sharma texted the same paragraph in 18.44 seconds using Microsoft’s newest Windows Phone 8.1 software, with the lauded Word Flow keyboard.
The paragraph both record-holders had to write is strange and longer than most of us ever write while texting:
The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.
Fernandes, despite being a teenager and avid smartphone user, doesn’t believe he’s addicted to texting.
“Since I was a child, I always loved phones, and still love smartphones today,” he told CNN. “But I don’t consider myself addicted to using smartphones, as I don’t spend all day using them.”
As for the founder and COO of Fleksy, Ioannis Verdelis couldn’t be happier.
“It was in our business plan from day one to get our technology to beat the record,” Verdelis told.
To try to beat the record, the company held a contest that asked users to test their texting capabilities against the old record. They received hundreds of entries and found Fernandes through the contest.
The company, which exited out of its beta version in both Android and iOS in December 2013 and February 2014 respectively, beat out Microsoft’s much-hyped Word Flow keyboard for the record. Released in late March, the Word Flow feature was one of the most exciting new features for Windows phones.
Word Flow isn’t the first to use swipes for texting; Swype, another keyboard app that lets users glide across letters to text, held a previous record for fastest texting. Back in 2010, Franklin Page, a Swype employee, managed to type the same paragraph in 33.54 seconds.
Unlike Word Flow or Swype, Fleksy still employs a keyboard — it just also uses an algorithm to autocorrect and guess a user’s next word. A user can also customize its appearance, like hiding the space bar on the keyboard.
Fleksy, along with its fastest user Fernandes, have shown that swiping isn’t always necessary for speed.
"Though we like swiping as an input method, the vision is to make an awesome keyboard that everyone can use," Verdelis said. "My parents know how to tap type. Now they can be fast smartphone typists too, without having to learn swiping or any other alternative input method."
In honor of beating the world record, the company released an update to its Android app, including a World Record Challenge contest. Over the next two weeks, users are being asked to beat Fernandes' world record. The top scorer receives a new Nexus 5 and the 10 runners-up receive a copy of the latest Guinness Book of World Records. The app is currently free for 45 days and available on Google Play.
VIDEO: YOUTUBE, FLEKSY