Show HN: QWERTY mini Pro – Why a 2-row, 16-key keyboard works better

If you want to make a keyboard more efficient, QWERTY is a very poor choice. QWERTY was designed in the nineteenth century, for mechanical typewriters. It was designed to be inefficient, so that the typewriters wouldn't jam up. As a result, we have such features like: placing the E key such that you have to move your left hand to reach it. E is the most frequent letter of the alphabet for the English language, and putting it anywhere but the home row is nonsensical. What is on the home row instead? A semicolon.What you've done here, amazingly, is made QWERTY twice as inefficient, by requiring two touches to register certain keys.To summarize:- QWERTY: Bad- QWERTY Mini: Worse- QWERTY Mini Pro: Still worse, but now costs you money

Sorry about the website being slow.You can also find more details athttps://www.reddit.com/r/QWERTYmini/Here’s the contentHere are the advantages of a 16-key, 2-row structure.1. 16 keys is the optimal balance
If you go down to 15 keys or fewer, you can’t keep all five vowels as independent keys. That forces awkward combinations, increases double-taps, and hurts typing efficiency.
If you go above 17 keys, the keys get smaller, touch accuracy drops, and the advantage over standard QWERTY starts to disappear.2. 2 rows enable real swipe-based input
With only two rows, each key has enough height for clear up/down swipes.
This makes it possible to input symbols, numbers, and extended characters instantly - without long-press or switching modes.
For example, it is possible to open the extended character panel with an up-swipe and instantly input the primary extended character with a down-swipe.3. Perfect left-right symmetry (4:4)
The layout is evenly balanced, which improves hand distribution and stability.
In landscape mode, this symmetry becomes even more powerful with split layouts, creating a fully balanced two-hand typing system.4. Main screen symbol placementExtended characters, numbers, and symbols can be designed to be accessed via double-tap, swipes, long-press, or simultaneous input.Why not traditional QWERTY?The 3-row, 26-key structure is fundamentally limited on mobile:- Too many small keys reduce touch accuracy.- Limited key height makes swipe input difficult, leading to reliance on long-press and drag.- Asymmetry reduces efficiency in split layouts and limits usability in landscape mode.The 2-row, 16-key structure is highly suited for efficient and extensible input on mobile.

I really liked it and bought it a couple of weeks ago, however I've run into a deal-braking bug and with no possibility to report a bug (the website is extremely slow and barely loads most of the time), I kinda ignored it since then.In Firefox on Android, I can't type a secondary character (e.g. "p") as first character into the address bar. Double tapping y/p results in "yp" instead of only "p". It works everywhere else, but not in this specific text box.Also, somewhere in the docs it's mentioned that you can use one of the outer buttons as trigger for a secondary char (i.e. quickly tapping "o/y" should result in "p"). I couldn't get this to work even once.

Yeah but the muscle memory

Is it just me or are there 4 rows there...

Comments on a previous Show HN, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220902