14 DAY TRIAL // Keynetik's new concept could very well be worthy of surpassing the touchscreen in terms of popularity, if properly promoted. Their prototype uses motion instead of touch for navigation through the menu and this sounds highly futuristic and with great potential for setting a new trend.
At this time, Keynetik's device is only a concept and comes as a prototype for demonstration. The company invented both the device and the user interface that are used in the final product. What makes their concept so special is that it relies on the user's motion to browse through the menu. By tilting the device back, the cursor will go up, by tilting it to the left?guess what? The cursor will go left.
The main menu has three columns and four rows, all with old-fashioned buttons to correspond. By pressing one of them, the device opens the matching icon. The technique has all chances of being pretty difficult to get used with, at first. This could make a very good reason for a slow adoption at first, but, if we think back, it becomes clear that the touchscreen was pretty unpopular before the iPhone, because it lacked tactile feedback.
A user with longer experience in using such a device could very well make browsing through the menu and the phone's functions look pretty impressive, at huge speeds. On the other hand, such a technology is pretty prone to errors, with chances of sometimes accidentally tilting the phone one way or another. The advantage with the device's additional buttons is that nothing is selected without the user actually pressing them.
Keynetik's new prototype is innovative and with a great potential, although it could take a long time until seeing it out on the market. Until then, the company has all the time to work on ways to make it more attractive to regular mobile phone users.