Typo Keyboard: One Nice Apple iPhone Accessory (preview)

aNewDomain.net — Everyone seems to have a mobile touch screen keyboard these days. You can thank the Apple iPhone for that trend. But not everyone loves it. Some of us have a hard time moving to the touchscreen of an Apple iPhone or Android device. We miss the old-fashioned QWERTY keyboard. And that’s where the Typo Keyboard comes in. At CES 2014, I took a look.

This and the next image credit: Ant Pruitt for aNewDomain

As I walked the exhibition floor of the Las Vegas Hotel  (LVH) , the Typo Keyboard display and sign caught my attention.

I chuckled when I saw the company name. I chuckled even more after I saw the product. The Typo Keyboard worked better than I expected.

First off, the keyboard slides onto the Apple iPhone as if it’s a protective case. That’s handy.

I found it quite easy to slide the two-part case on and off. Once attached, you’ve got a Bluetooth keyboard.

The screen of the Apple iPhone 5 wasn’t affected by this at all. Swiping, touching and tapping flowed as expected. I composed messages and entered text into fields. It all worked fine.

By no means am I a small-handed writer. And the Typo Keyboard is small. This fits the small factor of the Apple  iPhone 5, so it’s as you’d expect. But the Typo Keyboard surprised me. It felt the way a keyboard should feel.

It truly reminded me of the old BlackBerry keyboards, which also explains news regarding lawsuits. But for my purposes, that’s neither here nor there. The Typo Keyboard is solid — as solid as a plastic device is going to be. But it doesn’t feel cheap. My big hands were able to compose a message successfully and get back to my apps seamlessly. What more could I ask from it? 

The Typo Keyboard will ship later this quarter and is currently available for pre-order for $99. It only fits the Apple iPhone 5 and 5s, I should add.

Whether the Typo Keyboard will overcome legal or business hurdles, I can’t predict. But at least, for now anyway, there is an option for those legacy consumers stuck on physical keyboards. Oh, the things you see at CES . . . they never fail to surprise.

For aNewDomain.net, I’m Ant Pruitt.

 

Based in Charlotte, NC, Ant Pruitt is an IT pro, a columnist and the podcast captain at aNewDomain.net. Look for his Smartphone Photographers Community and Yet Another Tech Show. Follow him @ihavnolyfe or on Google+ and email him at ant@anewdomain.net. See all Ant’s articles on aNewDomain by following this link here.