Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group recently published news of a new prototype keyboard the company is working on called DisplayCover. The peripheral is designed for tablets and provides a “thin film” E-ink display with a resolution of 1280×305 pixels. Given this device is merely a prototype, there's no telling when we'll see the peripheral actually on the market.
This isn't Microsoft's first keyboard with a touch-sensitive display. Back in 2009, the Applied Sciences Group revealed the Microsoft Adaptive Keyboard, which featured a touch-sensitive display at the top of the peripheral and extended down underneath the keys. According to the company, users could display command icons and change the character set to a different language.
Now it's 2015, and the company's DisplayCover sets out to serve as a peripheral cover for touch-enabled tablets like Microsoft's own Surface Pro 2. The company says the new E-ink “strip” extends the overall tablet display by up to eight percent—not a huge number in our book but the tech is neat nonetheless. The company chose E-ink technology because it doesn't suck up battery juice quite like a full-color version.
“DisplayCover supports dynamic UI manipulation, concurrent access to multiple applications, stylus annotation, gestures and trackpad interactions on the horizontal plane,” the company says.
Microsoft's blog demonstrates how the E-ink strip is used, including pulling two fingers in different directions to zoom in, using two fingers to move a window, and using one finger to hold a window while the other is pulled to the edge, allowing the user to rotate the screen. The panel can also be manipulated using a stylus, or serve as a trackpad, the latter of which emulates a notebook keyboard.
“DisplayCover extends the available screen real estate of tablet computers while mitigating occlusion issues associated with direct pen and touch input,” the blog adds.
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