A technique to improve text editing on smartphones

We present a technique that aims to make text editing on smartphones more efficient. One of the main difficulties of editing on smartphones is the cursor positioning since the characters are usually smaller than the user finger, and for this reason a number of editing techniques have been proposed. Our technique is primarily designed to help the user position the cursor in the desired location: after the user has tapped on the text to position the cursor, soft keys with directional arrows appear on the screen and allow the user to move the cursor by tapping on them. Moreover, in addition to cursor placement, the technique also allows to perform the main editing operations through additional dedicated buttons for select/cut/copy/paste.