Imagine you wanted to use your iPhone to search for information on Buffalo-based experimental band, Damiera. Okay, so we know that you don’t want to do that but just imagine. Please?

Right, thanks. Now dig out your iPhone, fire up Safari and call up the search bar in the usual way. Type in "damiera" (without the quotes) and be careful not to make any mistakes. Did you make a mistake? We bet you did, even if you didn’t notice. Delete the word and try typing it again – and don’t be tempted to use backspace (you probably did the first time without even realising).

Try it letter by letter: D... A... M... I... and then what? If you manage to get past the ‘E’, you won’t get the ‘R’ – you’ll perhaps get a ‘T’. If you fail earlier, your ‘E’ might be an ‘R’. No matter what you try, the iPhone will not let you type ‘DAMIERA’ in one run without backspacing. Why? Well, our thoughts – and a video of the glitch in action – after the cut.

The iPhone’s predictive text is a clever thing, altering its key-detection area as you type. In other words, as you tap away, the detection area around some keys increases, while other decrease – the idea is that this makes it easier to type the word you want (or at least the one the iPhone thinks you want), no matter how bad your typing. And in this instance, it looks like the iPhone’s predictive text engine simply can’t cope with the idea that anyone might want to type the word "Damiera" – or even "Samiera" (which creates a different key confusion).

This fact has caused great frustration for poster Chaseforfeit over on Apple’s support forums, where we spotted this glitch. He runs a business called Damiera and is annoyed that he can’t type his company’s name in some situations. Other posters have now piled in with more examples.

So far, no-one’s discovered any proper English words that the iPhone won’t allow to be typed. However, if you want to find information on Damiera – business or band – you’ll need to use the backspace key...

Update: "Sesame" is another word that the iPhone reckons you won't want to search for, even though it suggests the word when you get to "ses"...

Update2: "Flickr" added to the list... (thanks to 'lewisking')

[Apple Support]

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