Projected Keyboard

[Guest Coucou]

Just seen a proposed light projected keyboard on Coolsmartphone. I'd love one of those, the only downside is that you'd need the phone to stand up on its own for it to be useful. With something like that - if there was a projected mouse as well - a phone like the spv could start to rival palmtops. While I'm on the subject of wishlist how about a screen enlarger like the Gameboy used to have? :)

[Guest spacemonkey]

A projected mouse wouldn't work. The whole point of smartphone is that it's not a touchscreen device, as such all it's applications don't expect or accept pointer type input.

But a projected keyboard would rock :) need a clear flat surface to use it though.

[Guest Coucou]

Yes but you can move the selection box around can't you? and click with the action key? Isn't that effectively the same thing? Maybe it's more like arrow keys and enter, hmmm *thinks aloud*

Anyway this isn't something the SPV could do, probably not the SPV2 either. Maybe SPV30? Who knows what operating system we'll be on by then! *dreams of integrated video, GPS and swiss army knife*

[Guest Coucou]

Now I come to think of it I saw this technology about a year ago on Tomorrow's World. How come it's taken so long?

[Guest spacemonkey]

I think the whole projected keyboard thing is taking some time to get sorted because of problems in the "real world". If you use it on a dead flat white surface you are happy, but in the real world you have to worry about vibration, rough surfaces, coloured surfaces etc.

Getting something like this working and reliable to a consumer standard is a pretty big task.

[Guest Coucou]

I'm not sure that colour should be a consideration for the sensing, after all you're actually tracking the fingers not the surface. The 'keys' are only there to guide your fingers. Vibration is probably the biggest worry, but that should be fixable if the sensor had one reference spot not on the keyboard, if it sensed that moving it'd be able to compensate. They don't reveal much about that on the website but it must be an issue on a train or other (truly) mobile application.

From the user's point of view visibility and stability would be the biggest worries i'd guess. Making it bright enough and adjusting the projection according to the vibration.

Probably the biggest single bar though is getting it integrated into devices, it consists of three separate parts all of which have some size and draw some power. There's not that much spare room inside an SPV, you'd have to get it up to P800 size at least, and who wants an even shorter battery life? The other option is to have it as a plug-in like other keyboards are now, but that takes away half the point. Anyone got $50,000 to spare so I can have a play? hehe :)