| Too many times a day, I dig into my pocket and pull out my iPhone. I click the home button, leaving my thumb for a half-second while TouchID recognizes my fingerprint and grants me access. Then, I almost always type something. Virtually every time I use my phone it’s to tweet something, add a task to my to-do list, search for an artist in Rdio, or respond to a message. I type in constant, short bursts, usually as I’m walking down the street or waiting in line at Starbucks. |
| Before I learned to type by tapping on glass, I had a long, sordid history with smartphones and physical keyboards. It started with my Palm Treo 650, the first phone that ever made me feel productive. I owned a BlackBerry Curve, a Motorola Q (my favorite keyboard ever), and a truly awful HTC Ozone. But I’ve never wanted a phone as much as I wanted the Dell Venue Pro, the Windows Phone 7-powered device that had both a big, beautiful display and a slide-out portrait keyboard that was incredibly comfortable to type on. It seemed perfect. | | The Venue Pro died before it ever really breathed life, but a tiny company called Typo is trying to revive its essence. The pitch is simple: the $99 Typo Keyboard case adds a BlackBerry-style keyboard below your iPhone’s display, so you get everything great about the iPhone, except instead of typing on your screen, you can type on a tactile, clicky keyboard. I’m clearly not the only person who’s thought that could be great. | | The dream of the BlackBerry is alive in Typo. Somebody wake me up. |
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