Snapkeys wants to wipe out the QWERTY keyboard on the face of the earth.
Ryan Ghassabian of Snapkeys inputs words to his tablet in a fast rate and high precision as he demonstrates their device at a booth of the Consumer Electronics Week in Vegas.
Their device is a keyboard that isn’t visible. It uses a new technology called the 2i and predicts typing to remove the need of the user to look at the screen of his smartphone or tablet.
The idea behind it is to use all the characters of a typical keyboard and and to effectively reduce the whole keyboard to only four “buttons”. For instance, those that stand on one point such as F, I, T, etc. are grouped in one button; those that stand on two points such as M, N, X, etc. are in another, those that stand on a wide base like Z, U, L, etc. are in the third button; and characters with a closed circle @, P, O, etc. are in the last button.
There are also two spaces at the sides of the buttons. One is for the space bar while the other one is for the delete button or backspace. Snapkeys predicts the letter that you’re trying to input by the way you push the buttons and which buttons you choose. The company is sure that the device will get it 99% of the time.
Ghassabian explains that the purpose of this technology is to “reclaim the space” that is being consumed by the keyboard.
Now don’t go rushing into any app store (be it Apple’s, Android’s or RIM’s) because the technology is not available in the market yet, and it won’t even be available as an app to be downloaded. The company says there are currently in the process of talking to carriers to embed the technology to upcoming devices and phones.
Can’t wait? You can try the demo at Snapkeys’ website.
Image source: thegadgets.net
