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RIM patents trapezoidal BlackBerry keyboards for slanty-thumbed texters
RIM is utterly devoted to the physical keyboard, but how do you deal with sausage-fingered emailers who can't pick out individual keys? Thanks to this newly-granted 2009 patent, the company has the solution -- a trapezoidal keyboard designed to offer easier access of type-weary thumbs and wider keys for better accuracy. We hope that in a windowless office in Waterloo, some engineer will combine elements from all this patenting activity and come up with the next generation of mobile telephone.
BlackBerry phones could get rhythm-to-unlock, like dun-da-da-dun-dun
Who needs face unlock when you could just tap out a private ditty on your smartphone? Maybe you'd risk giving away your credentials to any vaguely rhythmic phone thief within ten feet, but RIM's engineers have a patent-approved answer to that: Rather than just sensing rhythm, they reckon a phone's accelerometer could also detect the magnitude and location of each tap, which would make it harder for eavesdroppers to mimic. Just don't pick something too syncopated -- not unless you're this guy.
