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These days the devices we carry with ourselves are getting smaller and smarter. Smartphones are becoming more popular both in the business place as well as in the consumer space thanks to the success of the likes of Research In Motion’s Blackberry Smartphone platform and Apple’s iPhone. The designers of these devices are forced to compromise somewhere in order to come up with something that people can still put in their pocket and use. These compromises tend to come in the form of the input options available to users of the devices.
Designers have had two basic options previously, a phone number style keypad with predictive text input or somehow shoehorn in a small keyboard for users to thumb with. With predictive text input systems a user can deal with short messages, but anything longer than an SMS-length message is usually out of the question. On the phones with a built-in thumb-style keyboard there are different consequences of this design choice, usually resulting in either smaller screen sizes or keyboards too small to be useful for long emails. Of course, when the iPhone was introduced the third option, a virtual keyboard was revealed to everyone. All of these approaches have their tradeoffs and some work better for people then others.
But is there a better way to get input for your Smartphone while on the go? The Eleksen Wireless Fabric Keyboard is a worthy choice for all power Smartphone users to consider. You probably haven’t heard of Eleksen, a UK-based company that specializes in touch-sensitive interactive fabrics for wearable consumer electronics garments. Its main technology is ElekTex, an electro-conductive fabric touchpad optimized for the creation of flexible, durable and rugged fabric touch screen interfaces. Eleksen took this technology and mated it to a small Bluetooth module to create a wireless keyboard out of fabric that could be rolled up and fit into your pocket.
The Eleksen keyboard has a QWERTY layout comparable to a full-size keyboard, minus the numeric keypad in a series of five rows of keys. The keys are also color-coded by modal use of the SHIFT key as well. Due to how Eleksen’s ElekTex technology works the keyboard doesn’t support multiple-key chording, which only slightly alters how one uses the unit. To enter a capital letter for example, one would tap the SHIFT key followed by the letter key in question instead of chording the SHIFT key with the letter simultaneously.
The keyboard itself takes some getting used to as tactile feedback from keys is non-existent, however a user’s Smartphone can play a beep for each registered keypress as part of the Eleksen Smartphone driver to provide some feedback to the user. Eleksen provides drivers for practically all Smartphone platforms including Windows Mobile 2003/5/6, Symbian S60 v2/v3, UIQ, PalmOS, Blackberry OS4.1+ as well as for Windows XP. Previous versions of the keyboard had issues with staying in place on smooth flat surfaces, but Eleksen has placed strips of non-slip surface on the back of the keyboard so it will stay in place and this works well. In extensive use of the keyboard the only real aspect of it that requires time and training to get use to is the response characteristics of the spacebar. If you are the kind of typist who is used to just nonchalantly tapping the spacebar while typing, you may find that you have to use a bit more force when hitting the spacebar on the Eleksen for the keypress to register.
While the Eleksen keyboard is not perfect, considering the advantages of the unit’s form-factor for both portability as well as ease of typing it greatly offsets its minor shortcomings making it a strong competitor in the mobile accessory space. This performance, combined with its average street price of $75 makes it a great value for the money and a recommended buy.
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