Nokia started talking about tactile feedback a while ago, and they now have running demos:
Don’t be fooled by simple vibrational imitations folks, this is the real McCoy – you press a key on the screen, and it clicks under your finger with exactly the same sort of fingertip feedback as if you’d pressed a conventional keyboard key.People have a lot of features in mind for the iPhone v2, but tactile feedback doesn't seem to be on the top of most people's list. But I bet it is for Apple.
Tactile feedback would be a great improvement to the soft keyboard. When I first started using the iPhone, one of the first thing I did was to disable the keyboard sounds. But then, months later, I found that those little sounds made a big difference: they provide some feedback as to when the key is pressed. The sounds somewhat compensates the lack of tactile feedback. Of course, real tactile feedback would be better, as for one the sound is not always easy to hear. Would even a soft keyboard with tactile feedback would become as good as a real keyboard? Is this the beginning of the end for keyboards as they are today?
Thanks Erik for your comment to my earlier post Nokia Touch is on the way which triggered this post.
