{"id":58884,"date":"2026-01-19T07:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=58884"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:16:30","slug":"relive-the-excitement-of-watching-the-world-record-for-texting-being-smashed-by-a-finn-in-a-headband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/relive-the-excitement-of-watching-the-world-record-for-texting-being-smashed-by-a-finn-in-a-headband\/","title":{"rendered":"Relive the excitement of watching the World Record for texting being smashed by a Finn in a headband"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

In my previous life as a tech journalist I’d get invited to all sorts of product and publicity launches, but few were as dull as watching the record for texting being broken by a bloke with a headband.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here’s how I reported the occasion back in April 2005:<\/p>\n

Former World Text Champion Arttu Harkki used a Treo 650 smartphone to type the fastest-ever email on the move using a QWERTY keyboard \u2013 using a single thumb.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Harkki of Finland looked ready for business as he strode into the room of assembled hacks, his sports vest and multi-coloured headband giving the air of an Eastern European shot-putter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But Harkki wasn\u2019t here to lob heavy balls around \u2013 he was here to unleash his high speed thumb on a Palm Treo 650 \u2013 and claim that much prized smartphone texting record!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Before the record attempt could start, Hein Le Roux, official adjudicator from Guinness World Records explained the rules:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of phones that incorporate QWERTY keyboards, and we need to make sure that the record is standard across all models. For this reason, we asked Arttu Harkki to type using just the thumb of one hand.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After several attempts, Le Roux announced that Harkki had managed to complete the message in just 2 minutes 22.9 seconds. Huzzah! A new world record!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once I\u2019d recovered from the high octane excitement of watching someone write a text message repeatedly, I asked Le Roux what the previous record had been, and was surprised to find that there hadn\u2019t been one, because this was a new category.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, in other words, if I\u2019d stepped up before Harkki, I could have been crowned world champion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Think you can do better?<\/h4>\n

Here’s the message that was typed in under 2,5 mins:<\/p>\n

The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell (UK), who filed his patent for the telephone on 14 February 1876 at the New York Patent Office, USA. The first intelligible call occurred in March 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, when Bell phoned his assistant in a nearby room and said \u2018Come here Watson, I want you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my previous life as a tech journalist I’d get invited to all sorts of product and publicity launches, but few were as dull as watching the record for texting … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[456,17],"tags":[10,163,2839,2837,2838],"class_list":["post-58884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-photos","tag-london","tag-palm","tag-phones","tag-texting","tag-world-record"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/texting-record-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-fjK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58884"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59429,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58884\/revisions\/59429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}