Gaurav Sharma appeared relaxed but focused in his purple hoodie on Jan. 16, 2014. Less than 20 seconds later, Sharma, a 15-year-old from Lakeside High School in Seattle, found himself the owner of a Guinness World Record® for fastest text message using a touch-screen mobile phone.

Gaurav Sharma displays the Guinness World Records certificate that declares him the world's fastest texter.

Word Flow with shape writing, the same Microsoft Research technology that powered Sharma’s record-setting effort, soon will be available for mobile-phone users as a key feature in the just-announced Windows Phone 8.1.

Sharma’s time of 18.44 seconds to create a challenging, 25-word text message is quite a marvel. In three-quarters of a second less than it took sprinter Usain Bolt to set the world record in the 200 meters in the 2009 World Championships, Sharma whipped through:

The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.

That passage—precisely 160 characters long—is a handful to type, but not if you’re using Word Flow—an earlier version of which had been used to set the previous text-speed record.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/wordflow-040414.aspx

I'm pretty sure I've had this feature on my smartphone for years, but it's cool Windows is getting it. Also cool he broke the record using it. I wonder if a new touch screen typing input will ever be faster.

I'd imagine something with using your eyes in conjunction with your hand.

After that of course mind reding which will be fastest :)

Isn't this just swipe technology?

Yeah, they can keep the swipe crap.

Is this really threadworthy?

@kylie dog -- With swype you have to teach it some words hence why you are gtting the prediction wrong. To teach it words,, leave the function on and type as per normal. Where you type a word with the funcion on and you press space after each word,, you will be adding one words to its vocabular list.

Good job kid. You literally beat all the teenage girls with insane texting skills. That is an achievement in my eyes and certainly makes it thread worthy.