A teenager has taken the Guinness World Record title for "Fastest Texter" on the planet. Marcel Fernandes Filho, 17, set a record time of 18.19 seconds in New York last month.
Filho beat the previous record of 18.44 seconds set in January by another teen - a 15-year-old using a Microsoft phone at the company's office. To set the "Fastest Texter" record, Guinness required a 25-word text message composed of two sentences that said, "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."
The teen's world record bid was sponsored by Fleksy, an app for Android and iOS phones that replaces a phone's built-in onscreen keyboard with one that has larger keys and traditional buttons such as a spacebar, among other things. Filho used a touchscreen keyboard with a 114 percent larger typing area, which he used to type the Guinness text message. Filho reportedly started using the device in 2012 when he found the brand on Flipboard.
Filho's road to texting greatness started in 2009 at 13 years old when he hit his Dell computer with a hammer because of a flickering monitor. Not having money to buy a new computer prompted him to do everything on his iPhone 3GS instead.
But Filho insisted that he does not spend the entire day on his phone. He is, in fact, a student at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil.
He told CNET in a statement, "I don't know if you guys would be interested in knowing this, but I'm currently studying physics in UFSC (a college south of Brazil)."
In an email to Today, Filo stated that his record-breaking talent stemmed from a fascination with Guinness World Records. As a child, he used to search on the Internet for strange and interesting records.
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