> The RearType paper describes the project as follows:
>
> > “Our goal is a system that provides the tactile feedback and familiarity of a regular keyboard without cluttering the front of the display, ameliorates the occlusion problem inherent in direct on-screen touch and pen input, does not use the valuable screen real-estate taken up by an on-screen keyboard, leverages users existing skills in touch-typing on a regular physical QWERTY keyboard, and allows for text entry in highly mobile usage scenarios.”
>
> After building a prototype, the researchers put it through its paces with 12 study participants who were expert QWERTY typists. According to the paper, with one hour of training, typing speed in English averaged 15.1 words per minute, which “was not statistically different from their performance with a touchscreen soft keyboard.”
via [zdnet.com](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-reartype-physical-keys-to-the-ipad-kindle-and-tablet-kingdoms/7039)
The goal wasn’t to clutter the front of the device, yet there are still more buttons on the front of this device than an iPhone, or even a standard Android device.
And after all this work and research, expert QWERTY typists STILL couldn’t type as fast as I can on a software keyboard? What does that say for the 90% of us who aren’t experts? Can you imagine hunting and pecking on this thing?
At what point do we all just admit that Apple was right, that a physical keyboard on a mobile device is a relic, an old idea beyond which we’ve already moved?
And the biggest issue with this input method, of course, is that it’s completely unusable with one hand. If there’s one thing that Jeff Hawkins from Palm taught us years ago, it’s that any mobile that can’t be used at least in some capacity with a single hand is pretty much a failure. So there’s no way this keyboard would work on a phone of any kind. On a tablet, maybe. But not a phone.
The next big thing in text input will not be just a revamping of the old QWERTY keyboard. No one has figured it out yet, but there’s something much better out there. There has to be.
