While talking to a phone to send text may seem somewhat superfluous, making text messaging more phone-like is also making texting easier by incorporating dictation and voice recognition into the system. With voice recognition, text messaging is simplified, and the potential for texting-induced injuries are reduced as well. Plus, unlike a regular old phone call, the hip, often-cryptic message is broadcast whether the person on the other end picks up the phone and says “hello” or not.

"This new technology will significantly change how people interact with their wireless phones. For the first time, consumers can dictate messages directly to their wireless phone, substantially simplifying the messaging process," said Peter Skarzynski, senior vice president of Samsung, the company set to deliver speech-recognition text messaging, in a Wireless Business and Technology report.

The Samsung system works through voice commands, allowing users to dictate their text message, use spoken commands to control the address and delivery and even select pre-defined messages from a list for ultra-quick delivery. The intent is to make text messaging even faster and simpler, for everyone from the painfully busy to the keyboard-challenged.

From an injury-prevention perspective, a voice-controlled text messaging system could help relieve some of the pressure on the thumb as well. WebMD recently reported that while today’s technology junkies can get up to 40 words-per-minute out of their thumbs when sending text messages on wireless devices, all of that thumb work is leading to an increase in reports of “BlackBerry Thumb.”

Said ergonomist Alan Hedge, Ph.D., director of the human factors and ergonomics laboratory at Cornell University, the thumb was never intended to be quite so dexterous. In an interview with WebMD, Hedge noted that when the thumb is used to navigating a tiny keyboard, “you put a lot of strain on the thumb.” And that, said Hedge, is where the risk of injury comes in.

Additionally, UCLA hand surgeon Prosper Benhaim, MD, noted that the repetitive nature of thumb typing and the small size of the keys could both be to blame for conditions like tendinitis or for aggravating existing arthritis in the area of the thumb. “Because [the mobile device’s keyboard] is so small, people are likely to press harder versus a larger keyboard. So the thumb on the BlackBerry does more than you would do with your fingers on a keyboard,” Benhaim told WebMD.

The best way to reduce these effects, said the experts, would be to lay off thumb typing. For today’s text-messaging junkie that can only mean one thing – finding another means of getting those cryptic messages into the phone after all, possibly through voice recognition.

Sources: WebMD; Wireless Business and Technology