The problem with a full touchscreen handset is that there’s usually little room to ergonomically fit a physical QWERTY keyboard alongside the display. Nokia is working ’round-the-clock to bring S60 Touch to market, and it looks like they’re also working to develop a suitable keyboard solution.
This here patent application, titled “Mobile device with virtual keyboard,” details a method in which the mobile phone would display a virtual keyboard on its display. Sounds familiar right? Here’s the catch.
There’s no projected keyboard, there’s no on-screen keyboard. The mobile phone’s camera is used to detect the movements of fingers in front of the handset. The position and movement of the fingers is overlaid on a virtual keyboard on the handset’s display. Your fingers type on a blank, empty surface and the mobile phone registers those movements as key-preses.
Audio sensors would also be used to detect when a finger taps the desktop, which tells the phone that a “key” has been typed. An interesting idea indeed, but we have to wonder how well this technology will work in loud environments (coffee houses) that would obscure the tapping noise, or when you don’t have a hard surface upon which to “tap.” It’s definitely possible to “type” in mid-air and simulate the “clicking” noises yourself, but if we saw somebody spazzing out and flicking their fingers in the air while clicking their tongue, we’d call the cops on that “looney.”
Mobile device with virtual keyboard patent application (PDF)
[Via: Unwired View]