digg

Join DiggAbout

Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.

See the original image at physorg.com

Virtual tactile keyboard could make iPhone easier to use

physorg.com — A virtual tactile keyboard could hold the key to making the iPhone easier to use. Researchers are using tiny vibrations to imitate the feel of a button when a user touches the keypad. The user will be able to feel the edges of each key so will be able to identify where each key is without checking visually.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • dmourati, on 07/22/2008, -7/+23Cool trick to make the keyboard a little easier to deal with.
    • cdahlkvist, on 07/23/2008, -5/+5You mean "cool joke" that so many of you are falling for.

      Do you really believe that the vibrotactile actuator is going to make you feel like you are touching a "smooth rounded button"?

      Check out their site and try the software. You are a sucker if you actually believe it:
      http://code.google.com/p/iphone-haptics/

      The iPhone keyboard is probably one of the best I have seen (no I do not own an iPhone but the gf does). It's auto-correct is pretty damn accurate too.

    • jmon3028, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2Why not just have actual buttons?
      • MxM111, on 07/23/2008, -2/+5Because they take space when you do not need them?
      • Elranzer, on 07/24/2008, -1/+2Because Steve Jobs hates buttons (especially the right-mouse button).
    • jabberwolf, on 07/23/2008, -2/+5Um isnt Apple now stealing from the INSTINCT and Samsung i900 ?
      Samsung i900 is basically does everything the iphone cannot aside from maybe headphone jack.

      If you want the actual keyboard the HTC touch pro will probably do for ya. Again having everything the iphone doesn't.

      But I'm about to get buried for not saying that the iphone is the jesus phone...
    • apotropaic, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Yea not only does the instinct do this but so does the glyde and voyager. So saying "Researchers are using tiny vibrations ..." means they are looking at other phones that do it. There's some great research for ya.
    • MxM111, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3I thought the actual benefit of actual keys is to be able to feel them BEFORE you press it or even without pressing at all, just touching. How does vibration can emulate that?
  • Greenpointer, on 07/22/2008, -18/+3CAN'T WAIT FOR MY FRIGGIN iPHONE!!!
  • iamandyb, on 07/22/2008, -13/+6apple will never put this on the iPhone, because then it would be like the instinct, dare, etc. if you ask any person who owns an iphone, the touch screen works great. all it takes is practice, like it does with any phone.

    Why would you want to type without looking? so you could text while driving? That's a NO NO...
    • mediaphile, on 07/23/2008, -2/+22Practice? Not even. The key is just to trust the auto-correction and let your fingers fly. You can completely obliterate a word and it will get it right 90% of the time, provided you were trying to spell it correctly. I mean, you can miss every single key while spelling a word and it will still guess right. My problem is just with the device not tracking my finger movements fast enough to register all the taps.
    • AdamFromMyspace, on 07/23/2008, -3/+1I text while driving.. for me it's less distracting than being on the phone. I don't look at the keypad when I text though.
    • mdude85, on 07/23/2008, -3/+1Um, since when does it take "practice" to use a real keyboard a la Instinct, ENV2, etc?
  • streak, on 07/22/2008, -8/+2This isn't going to help at all, unless you're in a situation where you can't look at the keyboard. Users don't typically type by running their fingers over a keypad--at least not if they want to type fast. An exception would be the free iPhone app named "WritingPad," which depends on running your finger over the keyboard and is exceptionally fast for user-input! But vibrations won't help with WritingPad either.
    • deadmoo, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2The point isn't to run your fingers over the keys. Its to get tactile feedback that you actually pressed a key, similar to using a physical keyboard. You feel that the key was pressed.
  • oakj423, on 07/22/2008, -5/+50while neat, people will want this then complain about battery life of their constantly vibrating phone
    • jamdownboi, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3my thoughts exactly, its gonna drain the already poor battery life.
    • Cygnus666, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1thats the first thing that came to my mind!! It will take more battery power to keep that little motor constantly vibrating! especially if your a habitual texter like myself. But I like the concept.
  • Sethwm2, on 07/23/2008, -9/+1***** Awesome.
  • gojcaj, on 07/23/2008, -8/+1Wow its so revolutionary and new! But seriously it does need this.
  • aserer511, on 07/23/2008, -11/+39this is nothing new; the competition has had haptic for months now
    • santaliqueur, on 07/23/2008, -18/+10Too bad nobody gives a ***** about "the competition's" phones.
      • RetepNamenots, on 07/23/2008, -4/+5I do. And apparently so do at least 8 others.
    • se1zure, on 07/23/2008, -10/+3I wasn't aware this was an article about the competition's phones.

      Oh wait it wasn't.
    • dbz253, on 07/23/2008, -2/+8for example?
      • lysdexic, on 07/23/2008, -1/+10The LG Dare has it. Only has one vibration pattern though.
      • sw1ft, on 07/23/2008, -1/+10The Samsung Instinct for Sprint has it.
      • highPhone, on 07/23/2008, -7/+4The LG Dare is so terrible. It has a regular cell phone keypad only displayed on a touch screen. why would anyone want to do that???? Just put regular keys on the damn thing. Don't even bother with haptics.

        The Samsung Instinct looks like a decent phone... oh wait no QWERTY keyboard??? hahaha the keys are in ALPHABETICAL ORDER????

        plz, any serious competitors?
      • tripledjr, on 07/23/2008, -3/+7@highPhone: You do realise that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow people down when typing, original typewrites had an alphabetical layout but people would type so fast they would jam, so they moved the keys around to make it harder to type.

        A valid argument would of been it doesn't have DVORAK but neither does the iPhone.
      • highPhone, on 07/23/2008, -6/+1@tripledjr: So you're telling me you like the Instinct because it is... harder to type on? than the iPhone? thats like going into a mercedes dealership and saying 'no, id like something a little more sluggish'

        haptics wont amaze people until they have been implemented right. touch screen technology was around long before the iphone, but it didnt connect with the end user until apple implemented it right. we are still waiting for haptics to make this jump
      • tripledjr, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4@highPhone: Re-read what I posted cause you make no sense. Unless you think you can mechanically jam electronics in which case it would explain the apple fanboyism.
        A more valid example is going into a mercedes dealership and paying full price for a CLK and getting a GEO. Ill spell it out people type faster when used to alphabetical keyboards then qwerty ones.
      • highPhone, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1@tripledjr: thats true, but it goes against everything youve learned in marketing. you need to give people something theyre used to. It will be harder to type on because people are not used to it.

        I tried the haptic demo for iphone and it's very basic, but definetly an improvement over no tactile feedback at all
      • lysdexic, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1@highPhone: Turn the Dare to the side. Qwerty. It also has handwriting recognition.

      • sakuraz, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1are they good at all?
    • tripledjr, on 07/23/2008, -8/+3***** according to apple fanboys if the iPhone has it its a new and amazing technology all its "impressive" features are outdated it can't even do GPS good, like the song recognition I remember watching commercials 5 years ago for that technology.
      Get a real phone like the instinct instead of wasting your money on steve jobs' tech fashion trends.
    • cmorriss, on 07/23/2008, -1/+3I honestly don't see why this is needed. I just got my first iphone a few days ago. I can type faster on it than I ever could on my TREO 650 or even my AT&T Tilt. The big advantage is that you don't have to press in on the button. A light tough is all that is needed. That coupled with the auto correction makes for VERY fast data entry. People who get all bent out of shape about tactile feedback clearly don't own an iphone.
      • phoomp, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1I find that my iPhone's auto correction slows me down more than speeds me up since, more often than not, it auto-corrects to words I didn't want.
      • shank2001, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1Absolutely amazingly enough. I come from a chicklet qwerty smart-phone keyboard of many years use. At first I had a lot of trouble with the touch screen on my ipod touch, but after I learned to trust the auto-correction, I am typing faster on this touchscreen than on any other phone I have ever owned, real keyboard, handwriting recognition or anything else. I can actually type notes out as fast as people speak them, which I could never do on my old chicklet keyboards. And as for the guy who hates how it sometimes corrects words he didn't want corrected.... I find that 95% of the time it is correct in fixing my mistakes, the remaining 5% of the time, it is a simple matter of a backspace or two, or a tap of the X to refuse the suggestion, and I am on my way. This is MUCH more efficent than correcting your own mistakes. In fact you can demonstrate this to yourself.... for example, on my jail-broken ipod touch I can turn off the auto-correction, and let me tell you... you REALLY feel the pain of having to correct your own mistakes... and typing quickly becomes painful.

        And the more you use the iPhone the more it learns what you want... for example, you cannot type Flickr on the iPhone without it trying to correct it to Flicker, so I went to the notepad, and force corrected it to Flickr 5 times, and after that, now it lets my type Flickr... as well as Flicker in fact, now it offeres up Flickr as a suggestion. The auto-correction on the iPhone is the best, most sophisticated auto-correction I have ever used. I would NEVER go back to a chicklet keyboard on my phone, at this point.
    • earnjam, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Definitely nothing new, and the competition has had haptic, but has the competition had haptic feedback WITH the impressive multitouch that Apple includes on the iPhone? No.

      Put those two together and you've got something pretty nice in your hands.
    • chrismusaf, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1I got to play with someone's Samsung Instinct yesterday and it had haptic. IT didn't make anything feel "more real," and it was annoying as hell. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that anytime you do anything at all, there's a small few-millisecond delay just like every old cell phone out there.
  • enotswhat, on 07/23/2008, -14/+6oh a another iphone post

    *posted from blackberry wireless
  • P3NGUIN8, on 07/23/2008, -4/+16Cool, ya this stuff has been around for years its in all of verizons phones (touch)
  • slaverynin, on 07/23/2008, -3/+7like it was stated earlier, all it takes is practice i have no problem at all with it now but sure the keyboard was a pain at first.
  • nickspohn, on 07/23/2008, -5/+8Then people who have no clue what tactile feedback is will complain about the vibrations and 5 minute decrease in battery life.
  • xsecretfiles, on 07/23/2008, -5/+15I actually love the keyboard,
    once it learns all the words and phrases you've typed, you can even use two hands
    • ryleyleckie, on 07/23/2008, -2/+4should be able to use two hands right away, like blackberry. what would really help is if the keyboard would rotate to landscape like safari.
      • earnjam, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4I actually have a harder time on the landscape keyboard. Probably just because I never use it, but still. I don't think portrait is difficult at all.
  • skeletorcares, on 07/23/2008, -5/+11my voyager has this. I still like the real keyboard (on the inside) better. There is no substitute for the real thing.
    • reformation, on 07/24/2008, -1/+1Except there is - I've had my iphone just over a week and type quicker than I ever did on a mobile keypad.
  • Snakedal337, on 07/23/2008, -4/+2I'm impressed with the Dares on screen keyboard, it works awesome, but RIM has an interesting concept going on where youll be able to feel the buttons under the screen when your typing (or something like that). Do a google on the Blackberry Thunder and read up on it.
  • Snakedal337, on 07/23/2008, -7/+1I'm impressed with the Dares on screen keyboard, it works awesome, but RIM has an interesting concept going on where youll be able to feel the buttons under the screen when your typing (or something like that). Do a google on the Blackberry Thunder and read up on it.
  • zephc, on 07/23/2008, -4/+5Not look at the keyboard? Aren't you looking at it (or have it very near your center of vision) when typing on it anyway? I dont know about other people, but "touch typing" on my keyboard (MBP) is done by positional muscle memory, not feeling around for the keys.
    • phoomp, on 07/23/2008, -2/+3I like that you felt the need to state that your keyboard in on a MacBook Pro, as if an MBP keyboard is better for muscle memory.
      • zephc, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2Sorry that i have to spell it out explicitly for you: the keys on a MBP have a very small push distance, as opposed to most desktop and PC laptop keyboards which now feel awkward and clunky to me. About the only feedback I get from it is occasionally centering my index fingers on the F and J key nubs, but most of my typing accuracy comes from being used to placing my wrists in certain spots on it relative to how the machine is positioned in front of me. As such, I rely almost exclusively on hand and wrist muscle memory, rather than feeling a key depress. I suspect I, and most other people, could do just as well if computer keyboards were LCD screens.
      • phoomp, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4So, there are a couple of factors when it come to muscle memory and touch typing.

        Centering on F and J, as you mentioned.
        But, you also need to position the rest of your fingers after centering. Try doing that without being able to feel the keys.
        Try centering without being able to feel F and J keys.

        I think this would be alot harder than you think. Hence the failure of all those projected keyboards a few years ago.
      • zephc, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1I would probably overlay two tiny glass or clear plastic nubs on an LCD screen in the position where they keyboard is displayed.

        The failure of projected keyboards was in part due to their target usage (attached to palmtops), weak/unsure-of-itself marketing, and resistance from their demographic. Their concept is interesting, but there are few instances where something like that would be overwhelmingly useful.

        On a palmtop like an iPhone, if you two-thumb-type, your hand is already positioned in a manner that you will become accustomed to as you do it more. However, if you hunt-and-peck with one finger at a time, you have no part of the phone from which to normalize your hand, and you're pretty much ***** out of luck and HAVE to look at the keyboard.
      • phoomp, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2By overlaying clear nubs onto the screen, you will be adversely affecting every use *other* than keyboard, thus defeating the purpose of using a touch screen for text entry.
      • zephc, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1Maybe small indentations then, or weirder still, some sort of capacitor or something that sends a very mild electrical impulse to the skin when you are over the F and J keys (patent pending! ok, not really)
  • ijwhelan, on 07/23/2008, -6/+6"NO BUTTONS!" -Steve Jobs
    • shank2001, on 07/24/2008, -0/+2Funny enough, he was right. Despite it being hard at first, now I can type amazingly fast on it. You just have to learn to trust the auto-correction and practice a bit.
  • Doubledown, on 07/23/2008, -6/+5Blackberry Thunder will have this

    http://crackberry.com/touchscreen-blackberry-thund ...
  • deadmoo, on 07/23/2008, -3/+3Pioneer had similar technology on car stereo touch screens a few years ago, but I believe theirs used a small static shock instead of vibration. Some of iPhone's competitors already have touchscreens with some sort of tactile feedback, like the Samsung F490.
  • JimSwarthow, on 07/23/2008, -6/+1but the article earlier today said it's already WAY better than any smart phone EVER at texting/typing. - so which is it?
    • D14BL0, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I don't think you actually read that article, did you?
      • JimSwarthow, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1which one? the one that said there's room for improvement? or the one that said it's already teh bizomb? - as I said earlier, I think the iPhone is a sweet piece of technology. I'm just lookin' for some clarification.. is that ok w/ you?
  • rainbabyj, on 07/23/2008, -4/+9Sounds cool, but having my battery life go down 50% after a single text message isn't good..
  • pciulla, on 07/23/2008, -5/+2Oh no it didnt!
  • mdude85, on 07/23/2008, -8/+3A real keyboard slideout from the device would be much better. Really the only thing holding me back from buying an iPhone is the horrible touch keyboard, which actually takes longer for me to use than my $49 LG flip phone using T9word. Oh, that, and AT&T's atrociously unreliable service.
  • LavaWarrior, on 07/23/2008, -4/+1Looks very interesting, but i hope to see good voice recognition software, that would the the iphone over the top.
    • kraftj, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Not really. Though it might be nice for some things-- I would never use voice recognition for a text message.
    • diggdiggerid, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2ugh, so instead of people quietly tapping keys next to you in the bus or train they'd be talking instead. and the worst part is text messages are usually worse in terms of content than when people actually care enough to talk about something in person.
      • Andrwmorph, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Those gosh darn kids with their wireless telephones are polluting my air with sounds!
    • noreturn, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2He probably meant voice dialing. No phone has voice recognition texting because it's a ***** stupid idea, as you pointed out.
  • maxgoedjen, on 07/23/2008, -3/+5The Wii does this same sort of thing when using it's keyboard. Don't know that it would help that significantly, but can't hurt much(as long as there's an option to disable it).
  • ExSlashdotter, on 07/23/2008, -2/+3There's a company called Immersion thats been doing this for years with PC mice and software. Roll your mouse over a button and you can feel the 'bumps' of the edge of the button. Drag a slider bar and it feels like its scratching or something.

    Interesting stuff, but the thing with the iphone keyboard is you never drag your finger across the keys of a software keyboard. By touching them at all, its the same as PRESSING the keys. Not so with a PC mouse, because by its nature, the pointer itself is always moving over the surface, unlike a finger on a touchscreen. Not sure how they'd implement this...
  • xoineg, on 07/23/2008, -2/+4nice, another way to LOWER my battery life :(
  • Goallie11, on 07/23/2008, -1/+3I downloaded but it doesn't work on firmware version 2.0 yet. I think it would be pretty cool, but unnecessary, I find typing on the iPhone quite easy.
  • holyreality, on 07/23/2008, -1/+4clearly, most of you haven't even used the iphone keyboard. it might be a little tricky at first but the keyboard's ability to correct and predict words is phenomenal and it quickly becomes very easy to use. and why the hell would I want some vibration feature that will a) kill my battery and b) annoy the hell out of me?
  • ionblue, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2i tried it out and it really wasnt that great, I couldnt see myself touch typing any better than when I try to do it now
  • digitalpencil, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1how will this work for the tiny buttons in the iphone? i wouldn't have thought it possible to create accurate physically small enough vibration hit areas to make this effective..
  • MoistVonLipwig, on 07/23/2008, -3/+0I thought the trademark of the ***** was its "buttonless ultra-mega inovative technology".? It reminds of when apple woke up to notice that only 1 mouse button was plain retarded.
  • fadetoone, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1oxymoron?
  • Badandy127, on 07/23/2008, -1/+9Anyone who thinks the iPhone keyboard is unusable either hasn't used one, or is a technological idiot.

    I have rather large thumbs and type 50 WPM on it. The key is to trust the keyboard, and I know plenty of people who have discounted the iPhone's keyboard because they couldn't understand that concept of how to type...
  • 223Sniper, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2looks like Apple is coming up with a new line of " iVibrators"
  • cmantito, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1It's also been in satnavs for a while.. xD
  • NorinRadd, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1The iphone needs to have a 2 screens similar to this http://www.conservation.org/act/live_green/carbonc ... (press the "Open" button.

    Sure this will make the iphone thicker, but it will increase the functionality of the phone by allowing user input without covering the browser/video/ future video conferencing of the top screen
  • Jonesyxxiv, on 07/23/2008, -1/+0Typing on the iPhone is easy anyway, and i've tried this on my jail broken iPhone Edge and its doesn't help.
  • capitanbacardi, on 07/23/2008, -1/+0Hmm....interesting solution. Who knows if it will solve the problem, but in the meantime I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
  • jabberwolf, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1WOW

    Um isnt Apple now stealing from the INSTINCT and Samsung i900 ?

    Oh but theirs is a landscaped keyboard. Can Apple figure that one out as well ?
    • StandardsDT, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Apple is getting their idea from many phones. INSTINCT and the Samsung i900 aren't the only ones that have it. Verizon's LG Voyager and Dare has vibration feed back when you touch the screen they even went to the extent of calling it VibeTOUCH I believe.
    • chrislee149, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1It's not Apple who's doing this...
  • homercles337, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2My Tilt does this, and it has a real QWERTY keyboard to boot!
  • lacreme, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4Or you could just, you know, use the iphone for a few days.
    I was very skeptical of the keyboard at first but it's really easy to type on after you practice.
  • gthrank, on 07/23/2008, -3/+2They need to make the keys wider spaced. Doesn't matter how much tactile feedback there is - they are too closely spaced. I actually returned my iPhone 3G because of this and the short battery life. It's not usable as a business tool.
  • joelav22, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I am no apple fan boy and do not own an iphone (no plans to get one any time soon either), but a lot of my coworkers have them. After about 10 minutes playing with it I could type as fast as I could with my Q9M (probably the best smartphone keyboard I have ever used). It is surprisingly accurate and I leaned to just trust my instincts as to where I thought the keys were. All of the doubters and haters need to spend some time with the iphone's keyboard before they bash it as useless.
  • Thoku, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2Even the normal iPhone keyboard is far superior than the Windows Mobile one.
  • jackieboy37, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Apple needs to buy the rights to the shape-typing used in the WritingPad app by ShapeWriter and at least have it as an option for the iPhone keyboard.
  • sakuraz, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1This is downright idiotic.

    My laptop keyboard doesn't vibrate every time I put my fingers on it.
  • sakuraz, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1This is downright idiotic.

    My laptop keyboard doesn't vibrate every time I put my fingers on it.

    And vibrating doesn't tell me which letter I am pressing.

    Wii implemented haptic feedback to its controls, and it works.

    But this is a totally different environment.

    Haptic works with Wii because while pointing the controller at the screen, my hand is not pushing against anything, making my hand prone to drift, and move around.

    Our hands are ALWAYS on the phone when we're typing.

    Our thumbs do not drift.

    What they really need is to create grooves on the screen.

    I can't foresee any other improvements that'll help with the iPhone's keyboard otherwise.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.