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]

Comments

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jim   |07/08/08 6:18 PM learn how to type on your iphone and stop being a blinking moron. its a keyboard, you can type whatever you want on it. i just did on mine, worked fine. so did hundreds of others that saw / proceeded to make fun of you after reading your article. Reply | Quote

Scott Colvey   |08/08/08 9:54 AM Oh dear. Have you watched our video? Have you followed the link to the Apple Support forum that first highlighted the problem? We did not discover this problem - we merely reported on it having found other complainants and then yes, experiencing the same problem for ourselves. I urge you to watch the video and, well, try it. You may find there's a different moron on the loose. Scott . Reply | Quote

Josh   |17/08/08 8:39 PM Yes, there is a moron here, and it is you. You *cannot* type these words on the keyboard -- it will not let you. You cannot type it on any iPhone without hitting the backspace. Before calling someone a moron, perhaps you should employ a little common sense and *actually* try it. This is a well known software glitch, and we thank Scott for pointing it out. Reply | Quote

Philpot   |08/08/08 10:21 AM Jim, You are the moron. I followed Scot's example and he's right. Others have the same problem so visit the Apple forum like he says and you'll see., Reply | Quote

M   |12/08/08 2:12 AM with all due respect (and I dont own an iphone so I have no idea), but one would presume that like every other phone you can turn off the predictive text, no? Reply | Quote

dan  - re:   |13/08/08 6:13 PM M wrote: with all due respect (and I dont own an iphone so I have no idea), but one would presume that like every other phone you can turn off the predictive text, no? no. Reply | Quote

robby  - a-phone predictive text     |13/08/08 7:31 PM YAY! i love those sounds that Damiera make...they throw it down. -'berto Reply | Quote

LatooijBoy   |20/08/08 1:50 AM Without name calling I would just like to mention that i had no problems typing 'damiera' on my iPhone, pointing out that i have large hands. Also 'sesame' and 'flickr' I could type in without any difficulty/no backspace. I have the 16gig 3G iPhone, does that make any difference? Greetings from the LowLands, LatooijBoy Reply | Quote

cristiano  - damiera   |20/08/08 10:54 PM I've just tried to type "damiera 4;- "sesame " and "flickr" ; on my 16Gb i-phone and it type them properly. I'm italian so the language is itaian , could it make difference? Greetings from sweet lovely Italy Cristi ano Reply | Quote

Anonymous   |22/08/08 12:55 AM IHi Cristiano. Yes, the language makes a difference - different languages have different frequencies for adjacent letter strings. Apple's basically using it's word dictionary to see what words the user might be wanting to type. If you type "damie" into OSX's Dictionary application for English then only one choice comes up (Damietta, the eastern branch of the Nile delta if anyone's interested!). Since as far as the dictionary's concerned there's a 100% chance that the next letter typed is going to be a T, it makes the target area for the T key very big. Apple's scheme is generally very clever. However, it falls down in situations where the dictionary doesn't have an entry: mainly unusual names, foreign words, and neologisms. The dictionary is pretty big though, as the example of Damietta illustrates. One way around the problem is to stop making up silly words, or to check planned words against the dictionary ;) A bit of a hassle though. Luckily, in most cases the iPhone is quite clever about adding words to its custom dictionary - when you reject a suggested spelling correction, it adds the unknown word to the custom dict. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in the above case because the phone doesn't suggest an alternative - it forces one on you. It's a pretty rare occurrence, but really apple should allow you to add words to the custom dictionary. An idea for an application developer perhaps? Reply | Quote

gregsparc  - another: "matrix"   |22/08/08 12:16 PM "matrix" ; is a goner, too... It's pretty tough to talk about games-theory, or a state-machine chart, or a million other things..... Reply | Quote

Anonymous  - Spondylosis   |27/08/08 6:25 AM I am having problems with medical words. I cannot type "spondylosi s" and others. If there was a way to learn this word, maybe that would help, but predictive text won't learn these words that have to be misspelled first before corrected. Reply | Quote

Willa  - Pye     |07/09/08 2:06 AM I have a cat named Pyewacket, Pye for short. If I type the word "Pye" as an email subject, my iPhone changes it to "Lye." EVERY freakin' time. She's sick, and I've been sending updates to people, invariably with the subject line, "Lye." :( Reply | Quote

Ken Oporto  - "neat" doesn't work, it's english   |13/11/08 2:29 AM A normal proper english word "neat" cannot be typed.. the T is ignored and skips to the left or right just like your video. Can anyone else type neat? Reply | Quote

Scott Colvey     |13/11/08 11:07 AM Interesting one, Ken. I can type 'Neat' as a first, capitalised word but *not* mid-sentence. Oddly, though, the iPhone then wants to correct 'neay', for example, to 'neat'. A good find, anyway! Reply | Quote

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