No matter how advanced phones become the one thing that will always separate them from their laptop cousins is the presence of a full size QWERTY which is why so many handset manufacturers are continually looking for a decent workaround.
The latest king of lateral thinking is Nokia, an accolade earned by an innovative new patent that has surfaced. The patent suggests an augmented reality approach, which is much more simple than it sounds. The idea is that you prop up your phone in front of you (on a supplied cradle) and on the screen will be a picture of the surface behind the device supplied via the camera on the back. Superimposed on the surface in the onscreen picture will be a full QWERTY keyboard and the idea is that you type on the surface using the screen as a reference for the keys while the phone takes note of the position and sound of your fingers to understand what it is you are typing.
Apparently the system would work with just one hand when there is no appropriate surface available (typing on your knee for example) and you can even simulate the sound of the tapping with your voice if you like. We don’t quite understand that last bit but everything else about this idea seems pretty ingenious. Whether Nokia will implement this tech in may of its handsets remains to be seen but a ten out of ten for thinking outside of the box (quite literally) is deserved here.
(Via Unwired View)
Since we activated our iPhone yesterday, we’ve been retraining our thumbs to be nimble enough to not mistype on its virtual keyboard. However, usability research firm User Centric has been looking at the effect on business users, and it’s not good news.
