Teen Breaks Guinness World Record For Fastest Texter Using Android Keyboard Fleksy
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.
By Sadho Ram — 18 May 2014, 01:52 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
Marcel Fernandes, a 16-year-old Brazilian, has broken the old record and carved himself a place in history in the Guinness Book of World Records
A 16-year-old boy from Brazil has set the Guinness World Record for the fastest texting on a smartphone touch screen, typing a 25-word paragraph in just 18.19 seconds. Marcel Fernandes Filho set the record on April 25 in New York City, however he was officially crowned the texting king by Guinness yesterday.
in.comAnd Marcel did it while typing, NOT swiping. And the phrase that Marcel typed was no easy task, either.
It reads:
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.
The entire phrase had to be spelled and punctuated correctly.
cnn.comThe previous record was set in January by Gaurav Sharma, a 15-year-old from Seattle. Sharma texted the same paragraph in 18.44 seconds
Sharma used Microsoft’s newest Windows Phone 8.1 software, with the lauded Word Flow keyboard.
mashable.com
Marcel comes by his texting speed honestly. He said his skill started developing in 2009, after the then-13-year-old grew frustrated with a wonky monitor on his PC
Marcel Fernandes says he has relied on texting since 2009, when he broke the monitor to his desktop computer
Image via turner.com"So one day I got so stressed out about it that I literally took a hammer and broke my desktop monitor," he said in an e-mail. "With no money to buy a new one, I resorted to using exclusively my iPhone 3Gs, which I had at the time, to do everything that I needed to do. I basically lived, from that day on, using my smartphone."
cnn.comA college student studying physics, he maintains that, despite the record, he's no texting junkie like some teens
"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."
mashable.com
Marcel was flown to New York by Fleksy, makers of the keyboard app he used to break the record. He said he's been using the app since 2012.
"We've been passionate about building the most comfortable, beautiful, and fastest smartphone keyboard ever since we started" says Loannis Verdelis, Fleksy's founder. "The Guinness World Record is a great testament to our progress."
cnn.com
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.
mashable.com
In honor of beating the world record, Fleksy 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.
mashable.com
The app is currently free for 45 days and available on Google Play.