At yesterday’s event, Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 5 and the S6 Edge+, its top-of-the-line phones. While these phones were leaked down to every last detail, there were some surprise announcements at the event. One of these was a hardware keyboard cover for the Note 5 and the S6 Edge Plus.
The keyboard cover comes in two parts, a rear panel and the keyboard itself. After you attach the rear panel, the keyboard snaps on top and it covers the bottom-half of the screen. once placed, the phone automatically adjusts the interface, the input methods, etc. The keyboard is detected using sensors instead of bluetooth and the keypresses are sensed by the screen below the keyboard, meaning that this is a passive setup. And since it is passive, there’s no difference in battery drain when you are using it. Once you are done with the keyboard, you can affix it to the back.
On the surface, the concept looks similar to Ryan Seacrest’s ill-fated Typo keyboard that attached to the bottom of your phone and communicated keypresses over Bluetooth. The Typo for smartphones was stopped because of persistent efforts from Blackberry who claimed that the keyboard infringed upon patents. When you look closer, however, Typo and Samsung’s keyboard add-on are inherently different. First off, the latter is passive, while the Typo is active as it uses a Bluetooth Radio that uses power. Secondly, there’s a lot more going on in Samsung’s add-on as compared to the Typo. Once you attach Samsung’s keyboard, the software knows that a keyboard has been attached and adjusts accordingly. The price of the keyboard is expected to be around $60-$80 (approx. Rs. 4,000 to Rs. 5,000)
Samsung’s add-on keyboard certainly looks interesting, and can prove to be the perfect middle-ground between a touchscreen and a physical keyboard. Portable enough to be useful, tactile enough to be fast. Its could be just enough to sway the few users who are still holding on their Blackberry devices to try the Samsung Note 5 and S6 Edge+.