A Future Virtual Thumbboard Treo?

UPDATE (June 12, 2007): Looking for information about the new Treo 800 form-factor?  See my latest post Treo 800w New Treo Form Factor First Images!

As we’ve discussed in the past and as Ed Colligan, palmOne’s CEO, reiterated in the recent earnings conference call it is evident that there will at some point in the future be a ‘Treo Family’ of smartphones with different form factors and software which will appeal to new segments.

The existing winning design and form factor of the Treo 650 will likely continue to exist for some time to come – albeit with some minor modifications such as the removal of the external antenna for example.  What will the rest of the Treo family smartphones look like?

So far, the two most popular alternative designs that we’ve explored have been of a ‘Treo 710’ (left below) which consists of a slightly wider version of our Treo 650 that would provide for a slightly enhanced keyboard and the ‘Treo 810’ (right below) with a large (480x320) screen and a sliding keyboard.

For a while there has also been a ‘Treo 800’ design circulating around the web but which neither I nor too many others ever seemed to warm to because it didn’t have a keyboard.  However, my negative thoughts about a possible future ‘keyboard-less’ Treo were dramatically changed this weekend when I came across the ‘Thumbboard’ project at Tapland.

This Thumbboard project has developed the first usable virtual keyboard for large screen PalmOS devices that I’ve come across.  Although it was originally developed for the Tapwave Zodiac, support was recently added for palmOne’s new LifeDrive on which I had the opportunity to test it (below).

Leaving aside the fact that this is a very early iteration of the software (pre-alpha) and that it is therefore still very buggy, Thumbboard’s virtual keyboard proved surprisingly easy, fast and accurate to use – something which was quite a surprise on the one hand because I thought that the input error rate would likely be very high but which on the other should not be all that surprising considering that it is over 50% wider than the one on our Treo.

Sure there are still a hundred things to work out (for example the black keys on black background is not the best) and Thumbboard which currently works only in widescreen mode will not be appropriate for all the situations where you might need or want a keyboard.  However, for simple email and SMS for example it will prove to be a perfect solution.  More importantly, I think that Thumbboard now makes the whole idea of a keyboard-less Treo 800 (below) a much more realistic prospect.

I will certainly be following very closely and with much interest Thumbboard’s developments in the coming months…

Finally, previously a very large number of Treonauts voted that they would buy a wider ‘Treo 700’ or sliding keyboard ‘Treo 810’ if it were available today.  How do you feel about this keyboard-less Thumbboard-enabled ‘Treo 800’?