If you always find yourself sending wrongly spelled words in your SMS or email because of your iPhone's keyboard, then Ryan Seacrest has a suggestion for you. The American Idol host wants you to try out a keyboard case for the iPhone 5 (and later) that can reduce typos and ensure a smoother typing experience similar to Blackberry's popular QWERTY keyboard.
Seacrest has invested in the case called Typo Keyboard which is set to debut at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January next year .
The idea for the keyboard case apparently originated because Seacrest and his friends used two phones: one intended for typing and correspondence, and an iPhone for virtually everything else. Disappointed with the keyboard models on the market, Seacrest and his friend Laurence Hallier decided to develop Typo.
"One night, Ryan and his friend Laurence Hallier, CEO of Show Media, were out to dinner and both had phones on the table. Two people, four phones!," the press release says. "They looked at each other and thought there was an easy solution to the problem, a keyboard for the iPhone."
The Bluetooth case snaps onto the top of an iPhone and turns it into a makeshift BlackBerry Q10 complete with backlit sculpted keys. To use it, all you need to do is slide two parts of the case onto the iPhone, power on the case and connect it via Bluetooth to your device. The case covers up the iPhone's Home button but a button at the right of the keyboard replaces the function.
Seacrest and Hallier have already invested more than $1 million and expect to invest more for future keyboard products in development.
The Typo Keyboard case isn't the first product to attempt to bring the QWERTY keyboard to the iPhone. BoxWave and Dobi, for instance, have tried to do this but the use of Bluetooth is frustrating and the typing response rates were slow.
Seacrest and Hailler said this is why they decided to create the Typo case in the first place. "After ordering every iPhone keyboard available, we realized that there was no solution that worked well," they said.
The $99 case is available for pre-order and will ship in January next year.
