Sans keyboard

Will the next big trend be devices without keyboards?

Not simply devices with virtual keyboards, such as those on phones and tablets, but devices without keyboards at all? Are such devices possible?

Well, of course a keyboard-less device is possible. Not only is it possible, we have had several popular devices that were used without keyboards. They include:

The pocket-watch Arguably the first wearable computing device.

The wrist-watch The early, pre-digital watches kept track of time. Some had indicators for the day of month; a few for day of week. Some included stop-watches.

Since we mentioned them, Stop-watches.

Pocket transistor radios Controlled with one dial for volume and another dial for tuning, they kept us connected to news and music.

Apple iPod

Film cameras From the Instamatic cameras that used 126 or 110 type film to Polaroid camera that yielded instant photos to SLR cameras (with dials and knobs for focus, aperture, and shutter speed).

Digital cameras Knobs and buttons, but no keyboard.

Some e-book readers (or e-readers) My Kobo e-reader lets me read books and it has no keyboard. Early Amazon.com Kindle e-readers had no keyboard.

So yes, we can have devices without keyboards.

Keyboard-less devices tend to be used to consume content. All of the devices listed above, except for the cameras, are for the consumption of content.

But can we replace our current tablets with a keyboard-less version? Is it possible to design a new type of tablet, one that does not connect to a bluetooth keyboard or provide a virtual keyboard? I think the answer is a cautious 'yes', as there are several challenges.

We need keyboards on our current tablets to provide information for identity and configuration. A user name, or authentication with a server, as with the initial set-up of an Android tablet or iPad. One needs a keyboard to authenticate apps with their servers (Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo mail, etc.).

But authentication could be handled through other mechanisms. Assuming that we "solve" the authentication "problem", where else do we need keyboards?

A number of places, as it turns out. Tagging friends in Facebook. Generating content for Facebook and Twitter status updates. Recommending people on LinkedIn. Specifying transaction amounts in banking apps. (Dates for transaction, however, can be handled with calendars, which are merely custom-shaped keyboards.)

Not to mention the challenge of changing people's expectations. Moving from keyboard to keyboard-less is no small change, and many will (probably) resist.

So I think keyboards will be with us for a while.

But not necessarily forever.