The headline is a tad misleading. Everyody’s favorite handset isn’t getting an actual keyboard as part of its hardware suite. Instead, it’s getting the Blackberry treatment with an accessory iPhone case (of sorts) that makes the thing look like one of RIM’s units with a front-mounted QWERTY keypad. And it’s inexplicably called the iTwinge.
One of my long-awaited features for the iPhone has been an actual keyboard that I can either plug in or connect to via Bluetooth. Heck, I’ll give up carrying my netbook around when one of those come out. I won’t get that here. Instead, we get a dock with a three-row QWERTY panel that lets you type on the iPhone using a physical keypad.
The thing, in all honesty, looks ridiculous. Even worse, the mechanics by which it functions look equally simple, which makes it hilarious that Mobile Mechatronics (the company behind the iTwinge) is being cagey about its inner working. From what we can tell, it simply absorbs the physical key presses and passes it along to a capacitive nodule directly touching the screen – you touch a letter, it touches the same.
iTwinge is supposed to work with all iPhone 3G and 3GS models, with a release slated for November 19. I would have guessed it’s a joke peripheral, but they’re taking actual orders beginning last Wednesday, so I don’t know.
Major failure, if I do say so myself.
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