Video of iPhone Japanese Keyboard from iPhone Firmware 2.0

Steve Jobs had announced during his Keynote address at Apple's WWDC 08 event that Japanese and Chinese will have various input types including character recognition.

So its no surprise to see a video demonstrating iPhone's Japanese keyboard from iPhone firmware 2.0 via iPhone SDK simulator.

However, the thing that you can figure out from the video demonstration is that it is very well designed and refined.

Tokyo Mango who have published the YouTube video describe the input method as:

You can pick from a muti-tab style kana keyboard or a sliding keyboard. Japanese kana letters are organized in groups of five according to a beginning letter and corresponding vowels (a i u e o), so you can either put in the first letter and then hit the same key b/w 1-5 times to get the right sound, or you can put the first letter in and then scroll through to see all five sounds and pick the right one.

Its been rumored that the handwriting recognition feature was bought by Apple from the developer of HWPen which was the Native iPhone app to bring handwriting recognition to the iPhone.

If thats true then Apple seems to have done a very good job enhancing it even further for the official launch.

You can checkout the video demonstration of the Japanese keyboard from the iPhone 2.0 firmware below:

What's also mighty impressive is that iPhone's revolutionary virtual (software) keyboard has made it possible for Apple to release iPhones in more countries without wasting time manufacturing plastic keyboards by rolling out such features in firmware updates.

Let us know what you think?

[Tuaw via MacRumors]

 

Top iPhone Hacks Categories:

iPhone 3G
iPhone Software
Hacks
iPhone Applications
iPhone Tips & Tricks
iPhone Games
iPhone News 

 

What next?