July 02, 2003
Next Gen mobile keypads
Randy Delucchi turned me on to a story over at Mobile Burn about this amazing overlaid keypad - with both alphabetic- and number-pad intermingled. Apparently, although it takes some getting used to, it works because there is software behind the scenes that can sort out cases where you accidentally hit both a number and a letter at the same time.
The shot here is of a Panasonic G87 demonstrator phone. This design is by Digit Wireless. The keypad system is called Fastap (just in case you want to google for it to learn more). I am partial to QWERTY, so this keypad is going to have to be good to win me over. But it looks like this design will solve a major dilemma in the cellular pda category.
You want a keyboard, thumbboard, whatever, so you can enter text conveniently for email etc. Since this is a cellular device, you want it to be your cell phone too and that means it would be nice if it is relatively narrow and phone-like. Finally, you need an easy to use numeric pad for punching in phone numbers. The fastpad is an elegant and creative solution!
Posted by tokerud at July 2, 2003 01:19 AM
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