I recently discovered Tengo, a product that streamlines stylus-based text entry on Windows Mobile devices.  It works on PocketPC 2003 and Windows Mobile 5, including phone editions.

I was a bit skeptical at first, but I gave it a try (since it’s FREE) and I really like it.  The idea is similar to predictive text entry on a phone, where it guesses what you’re trying to type.  Tengo takes the standard QWERTY keyboard and divides it into 3 rows and two columns.  So if you know the keyboard, you can pretty easily get used to tapping where you’re supposed to.  And since there are only 6 targets, you don’t have to be so careful about where you’re tapping.  After you tap out your word, it gives you a list of words that can be spelled with the “button” combination you tapped.

That’s the basics, which impress me alright, but it’s the minute details that REALLY impress me.  For example, Tengo guesses what word you’re trying to type based partially on which actual letter you hit.  So while there are only 6 “buttons”, it actually takes note of where on those “buttons” you’re tapping to try to guess the letter you intended to hit.  Also, it has a great “scribe” feature for words that aren’t in its dictionary.  Just draw a diagonal line across the letters you want to “type” and it will stop trying to guess what word you’re trying to do.  Also, it will automatically memorize the words you “scribe”.

Tengo also offers a version 2 product, which is not free.  I haven’t tried version 2 yet, but if I keep enjoying the free version, I very well may upgrade.

The only problem I’ve run into is every once in a while, Tengo seems to dock itself with the bottom of the screen, so I can’t get to the button to turn the “keyboard” on/off, or switch to a different keyboard.  This also has the effect of hiding the two action buttons at the bottom of the screen.  I think I’ve actually narrowed this down to when I use Tengo in Minimo.  Minimo doesn’t give you the standard bar at the bottom with the two action buttons and the keyboard choice/toggle.  So when I open Minimo and click on a text field, the keyboard is automatically displayed, and it’s aligned with the bottom of the screen.  I think that then when I use Tengo in another application after that, it doesn’t reposition itself, so it hides that bottom bar.  That’s just my hunch, at least.