WayTools has created an extremely portable and efficient little smartphone/tablet keyboard. The Textblade folds into half the size of an iPhone 4, the perfect size to keep in your pocket.
The Textblade unfolds into a QWERTY keyboard which is capable of linking to your device and keeping up with typing at full speed. The entire layout is divided into four keys per side, and a spacebar which has touch-sensitive corners for accessing secondary features like symbols and numbers. The comfortable size and shape promises an effective typing experience for those who either have yeti-sized fingers or those who enjoy the use of the whole smartphone screen for things other than typing.
The only problem we can see is that confusion may arise when trying to press the same key with two different fingers, seeing that the Textblade’s layout actually imitates the basic finger movements that are used to touch-type on an ordinary keyboard. User fingers basically get mapped to specific keys and so each key, with its attendant sub-keys, is meant to be handled by one finger only.
[youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwGK5RvNOFI”]
Virtual keyboards might get in the way of important information or could just become an irritation for those OCD sufferers out there. The Textblade seems to be the answer, and also seems to be even more portable and efficient than previous models of portable keyboards though we’re going to reserve judgement until we actually get our hands on one.
The Textblade is available from Waytools, though there will be a bit of a wait. It’ll set you back around $99 (R1,155).
Source/Image: The Next Web
