{"id":6870,"date":"2025-06-23T02:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T02:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/6870\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T02:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T02:32:11","slug":"we-solved-the-smartphone-keyboard-problem-back-in-2013-its-time-to-bring-this-concept-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/6870\/","title":{"rendered":"We solved the Smartphone Keyboard problem back in 2013\u2026 It\u2019s time to bring this concept back"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019ve owned a smartphone for a decade. I think a decade should be enough time to really go over a learning curve and become a master of something\u2026 but here\u2019s the problem. I\u2019ve typed relentlessly on touchscreens for ten freaking years yet I still make typos \u2013 more so than ever. Ten years should be enough to be able to navigate a keyboard without problems, right? Enough time to develop muscle memory to type flawlessly. I still make at least one typo every 2 sentences, which by ANY standard, is horrendous\u2026 especially after a decade of it.<\/p>\n

Touchscreen keyboards are fundamentally broken. No level of swipe-to-type or alternative keyboard formats\/designs will fix this. I also got my hands on the Clicks<\/a> keyboard for my iPhone 15 Pro, and while it solves the typing problem (phenomenally well, if I may add), it doesn\u2019t solve the real estate problem. The resulting device is at least 40% longer than my existing phone\u2026 resolving a typing issue by creating a size issue doesn\u2019t seem like the best kind of fix, but I found myself stopping dead in my tracks when I stumbled across this concept from Jet Weng (founder of case-making brand SUPCASE<\/a>). Concept Plumage builds a keyboard right into the phone\u2019s case in a way that doesn\u2019t extend the phone\u2019s inherent footprint. For a concept released in 2013 (when Windows Phones were still a thing), it seemed way too futuristic its time, but in today\u2019s reality, Concept Plumage can absolutely exist\u2026 and it should.<\/p>\n

Designer: Jet Weng<\/p>\n

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When Weng designed the Concept Plumage, he envisioned the phone as having just \u2018half\u2019 a screen. Sort of like a Blackberry-esque device, Plumage would remain shut most of the time, but would open sort of like peeling a banana to reveal a screen on top and a physical keyboard at the bottom. Flip, type confidently, navigate the web, use the upper touch-sensitive screen, flip back to shut the phone. It\u2019s elegant and user-friendly, even though the Concept Plumage essentially absorbs half of your phone\u2019s screen space (or rather, the space where the screen could have been).<\/p>\n

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But let\u2019s really look at the big positive here \u2013 this format of \u2018flipping over a flap to reveal half a keyboard\u2019 is actually a brilliant idea. Smartphone cases could implement a keyboard like this with absolute ease. Flip the flap halfway down for a keyboard, flip it completely to use your phone\u2019s screen in its entirety. The logistics are manageable, but the pros outweigh everything I can think of.<\/p>\n

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Imagine having a smartphone with a dedicated keyboard that disappears when you don\u2019t need it. Your average smartphone now has AI \u2013 it\u2019s VASTLY more powerful than laptops from a decade ago \u2013 the only thing really stopping it from becoming a full-fledged personal computer is the fact that typing on a touch-sensitive screen is still such a massive problem\u2026 nearly 20 years after Jobs unveiled the first multitouch display on the first ever smartphone.<\/p>\n

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Weng\u2019s concept from 12 years ago still sounds extremely promising for phones of today. If anyone from SUPCASE is reading this, you\u2019re sitting on a goldmine. Keyboards run on BLE, and can be made to be really thin. Develop a keyboard that snaps to the front of your phone and runs for weeks (if not months) on a minuscule battery. Since half the flap houses the keyboard itself, the other half could be the processor, battery, and potentially a wireless charging coil that juices your keyboard flap in minutes, allowing it to run for months. Or better still, ditch the wireless charging headache for a simple solar panel that keeps your keyboard perpetually juiced.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s 2025 \u2013 I really don\u2019t think we\u2019re making much progress if humankind still wastes 10-20% of their time backspacing words because of dumb typos. We could fix keyboards, smartphones, and by extent, portable personal handheld computing. It\u2019s just a question of who builds the prototype first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve owned a smartphone for a decade. I think a decade should be enough time to really go…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[611,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-6870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-mobile","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114730339050655646","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}