David McCandless

I bought some undu at Painsbusys to eat with my flaunaue. Why can’t my mobile spell properly?

My phone has everything: camera, polytones, triband, GRPS, internet, MP3 player. The manual is heavier than the phone, which is heavier than my wallet, now substantially emptier for having purchased it. But there is one flaw: the predictive text dictionary.

Published in The Guardian, 24 November 2005

Its lexicon is so dumb it fails to predict the most basic and essential 21st-century words such as tofu, flatmate and Sainsbury’s. Instead, it makes dumb guesses: undu, flaunaue and Painbusys.

Worse, when it guesses Painbusys, it makes a chirpy optimistic beep, like a puppy that has brought you a child’s severed leg instead of the newspaper. “This?” it yaps. “Did you mean this?”

No, I did not, I tell it as I fight the urge to fling it at a wall. This happens a lot, about 12 times a day. The technology is infuriating. I don’t understand it. For example, some words that my phone doesn’t know - Marylebone or Wi-Fi, for example - it stops trying to spell halfway through.

But with other words, it allows you to text to the end, cycle through a series of ludicrous spellings before offering you Painbusys. That must mean that Painsbusys is in its dictionary. Someone has put that word there. Who? Why?

I still remember the giddy moment when I discovered how to predictive text. I had always been confused by how some friends replied so quickly and so articulately to my missives.

I watched, dazzled, one night as a girlfriend composed a lengthy text in an instant. She pointed out the trick, and showed me which buttons to press. Once I had cracked it, there was no going back.

But predictive texting was sold to me as a learning technology - the more you text the more your phone expands its vocabulary. But it’s a lie. As soon as I turn my phone off, it forgets all the words I’ve painstakingly tapped in.

So every few days I must teach this remedial two year old that I live in Camberwell not Canceryell. That the Indian meal I have cooked contains dhal and parsnips, not fick and rappogs. And that I’m phoning my mum at seven, not sinning.

Many mobile companies offer whizzy “where I am” technologies that track your location and send you custom content. Find a restaurant near me, give me directions, and so on.

Instead of these gimmicks, how about something revolutionary? A predictive text dictionary not only tuned to where I live, and what century I inhabit, but that knows my demographic group and that I swear occasionally. It would be loaded with words every metropolitan geek needs: Koko, Hakkasan, Kensington, PowerBook, nightbus, Wi-Fi, Limewire, psilocybin and hah - as “hah, you lousy phone, I’m getting an upgrade”.