The notion of a physical keyboard attachment to attach to the inherently sexy iPhone's manicured form sounds like it will be a clumsy, Bluetooth keyboard work-around. Not so: Spike is a genuinely attractive piece of machinery which has similar functionality to the Blackberry keyboard, even down to the chamfer on the keys themselves.
QWERTY for touchscreen
It works through the capacitive touchscreen of the iPhone. Yep, that's right, this thing overlays the on-screen 'keyboard' and applies a layer of tactile plastic between you and those pesky touchscreen 'keys'. Tim Hornyack reckons it isn't as good as his Blackberry (which I guess we already knew) but hails it as a general success, despite some problems with key recognition.
Obviously this is a relatively convoluted workaround, effectively simulating a real QWERTY phone with a plastic add-on. It's not going to be as good as your Curve or Bold. But still, it bodes well for the future of the physical keyboard as it demonstrates that there's an appetite for practicality and the money to back it up.
We'll be covering the world of iPhone physical keyboards in more depth in future, so if you know of any others then leave a comment or get in touch.
No comments:
Post a Comment