14 DAY TRIAL // Smartwatches have begun to spread, as a concept anyway, but while they, in theory, could do everything a smartphone does, they don't have a big enough screen for it, even with touch support.
It all boils down to size: while the technology does exist for cramming everything, physically and virtually, in the watch, there is a limit to how small things can get before they become impossible to use.
Case in point, a full keyboard, on-screen or physical, cannot be forced onto a watch like the Pebble, because it would need a needle point to type.
Obviously, that's not something easy to carry around or comfortable to use, not to mention the likely damage that would be inflicted on the screen or keyboard.
Yet the will exists, so a way had to be found, and it has been, thanks to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
The group invented something called the Zoomboard: a penny-sized touchscreen QWERTY keyboard that solves the size problem by magnifying segments of the virtual keypad when tapped.
“We think it’s really valuable—even if it’s a rudimentary text input mechanism—to have something you can fall back on,” says Chris Harrison, a co-author of the paper explaining Zoomboard. “The first time they used it, people were actually pretty good.”
True, using the Zoomboard isn't particularly fast, but it beats having to build a numpad and using the same multi-character support employed by traditional mobile phones.
For those who want to know the specifics, the Zoomboard, on an iPad, measured 16 millimeters by 6 millimeters (0.62 x 0.23 inches).
Students were able to input 9.3 words per minute. Slow, but with the same accuracy as using a PC keyboard.
There's actually an online demo that shows how the software keyboard looks on several devices. We don't have trouble imagining it being adopted by today's gadgets.