During the keynote presentation at BlackBerry World 2012, RIM gave us a sneak peek of some of the cool new features coming to BlackBerry 10 phones. One of the features shown off that got us salivating was the touchscreen keyboard, which takes an extremely innovative approach to predictive text. Instead of placing suggested words above the keyboard, which diverts your attention from the keyboard keys while typing, the BlackBerry 10 keyboard layers its suggestions on the frets between the rows, above the key you're about to tap for your next word. From there you can easily swipe a word up or ignore it. Watching the demonstration at BlackBerry World, it really is brilliant. We're **excited** for it.
What we're less excited about is the youtube video that popped up today showing off an iPhone version of the BlackBerry 10 Keyboard. Dubbed the Octopus keyboard and available as early as next week to iPhone users that have jailbroken their device, the Octopus keyboard is a pretty clear iRIPOFF of the BB10 keyboard. Check out the video above to see it in action. The implementation isn't quite as clean as the BlackBerry version, but the premise is there.
It'll be really interesting to see what, if anything, RIM does about this. I don't know if Research In Motion owns or has filed for any intellectual property over their new keyboard design or has licensed it from someone who has, but my hunch is that RIM wouldn't have shown off something like the BlackBerry 10 keyboard months before the first BlackBerry 10 phone is due to hit the market unless they were comfortable in doing so. BlackBerry is known for having the best physical keyboards, and by previewing the BlackBerry 10 keyboard they very publicly demonstrated that they're gunning to be known for having the best touchscreen keyboards too.
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