iPhone with a Keyboard?

The release of iOS4 included the capability of your iPhone communicating with an external keyboard via Bluetooth or even USB.  So far, nobody’s taken advantage of that feature.

Enter designer Altamash Jiwani who envisions a wraparound iPhone case with a sliding QWERTY keyboard and a pass-through port for charging.  In Jiwani’s design, the keyboard can be used either closed (covering the screen) or open, letting you see the entire screen.  In essence, it would turn your iPhone into an “iBlackberry” or “iDroid.”

Mind you, this is still just a conceptual prototype, but it does beg the question: how come nobody’s offered up an external iPhone keyboard yet?

It really does seem a shame that people are not keen on having keyboards on phones anymore. Lets look at the obvious reasons why an actual keyboard trumps a LCD display keyboard.

1. If you break the screen badly the chances are that you will not be able type effectively and use the phone to its full potential.
2. Break a button and you can get a replacement keyboard easily online, from the manufacturer or from the plethora of phone shops on the high streets.
3. Better for your fingers? I have read research that suggests that the layout of a keyboard is wrong and should move down in lines not in slightly diagonal lines.

However, I tend to use a phone with a LCD display keyboard because they are cooler. But then I just went ahead and bought before checking my current account