TextBlade fits a QWERTY keyboard in 8 smart multitouch keys

 

No matter how good on-screen keyboards get, we’re still left with the inescapable fact that they take up valuable screen real estate. You could always carry a physical keyboard, but that’s no more convenient. TextBlade is a Bluetooth keyboard for iOS and Android devices that tries to make carrying a physical keyboard less annoying. It’s less than a third the size of an iPhone and crams a full QWERTY layout on just eight physical keys.
TextBlade is composed of four pieces, all of which snap together into a small block for storage and transport. There’s a stand, a spacebar, and two keyboard halves with the buttons. The spacebar and the two parts of the keyboard connect magnetically and tether to your phone or tablet over Bluetooth 4.0.
Each of the eight keys has several letters, symbols, and modifiers on it. Each time you press a letter, the entire key depresses, but TextBlade uses multitouch technology to keep track of which letter your finger was on when the button activated. So it knows the difference between W and X, even though they both trigger the same physical switch when pressed. Simply having a physical button to press will probably speed up touch typing dramatically. There are also a few key combinations that you’ll have to learn for functions like text selection and cursor control.
The spacebar might look a little bulky, but there are several reasons for that. First, it houses the battery, which has a little USB dongle for easy charging sans wires. Supposedly it runs a month on a charge, but that sounds optimistic. It would be impressive if true. The spacebar is also where you’ll find the function key — simply press on the lower right section of the spacebar and the green layer of key markings become active (numbers, lesser-used symbols, and so on).
TextBlade looks quite impressive on video, but we’ll have to wait and see if the familiarity with QWERTY is enough to make this form factor workable. The TextBlade is currently available for preorder at $99, but all units through late late March are spoken for already.