Microsoft’s clever curved keyboard for iOS looks very smart

This curved keyboard provides thumb accessibility even on large screens. (credit: The Verge)

One of the enduring high points of Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile is the Word Flow software keyboard. It looks good and works well, with a generally sensible autocorrect algorithm and a good implementation of swipe-style typing. Earlier this month it was learned that Microsoft was planning to produce a version of this keyboard for iOS and Android, after e-mailed invitations were sent to some Windows Insiders.

Through The Verge we now have a good idea of what that keyboard will look like, and immediately we can see that it has a rather compelling feature not found in the Windows version of the keyboard: a curved one-handed mode that arcs the keyboard around either of the phone's lower corners. This neatly tackles a problem that a few of us here at Ars were pondering at lunch: how do you make a swipe keyboard work when the phone screen is so enormous that you cannot possibly reach both sides with your thumb. You'd have to hold the phone in one hand and then use your index finger, or something equally inconvenient.

The solution Microsoft has implemented in Windows 10 Mobile is to allow the keyboard to be scrunched down and pushed closer to one side of the screen or the other. The solution seen in the pictures of the iOS keyboard looks altogether neater: not only does it draw the very furthest keys in, so that they are within reach of the thumb, it also pushes the keys closest to the corner further out, away from the corner, so that you do not need to contort to reach those either.

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