The Gadgets Page

When I owned a Palm, there were literally dozens of keyboards that I could purchase for use with it. It’s surprising to me that the iPhone doesn’t have that option. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can use it with any Bluetooth keyboard, but if you don’t want to break your user license agreement, then you are kind of out of luck.

It looks like ION is trying to rectify that problem. At CES this year, they were showing a prototype of a new keyboard called iType, which works with your iPhone.

The iPhone docks into the keyboard for typing.

It’s a pretty nice sized keyboard that is light and easy to type on.

Unfortunately, you need to use their app to type with it. It doesn’t take the place of the onscreen keyboard in all applications. You have to type in their application and then you can copy and paste to email or any other writing intensive app you use.

Here is a video showing how the keyboard acts with their application.

I would love a full-sized keyboard that works with my iPhone, but the iType won’t work for me. Unless I can type with the keyboard in any app, it’s useless.