Frankly, the ultimate pocketable keyboard has already been designed and produced in quantity and the intellectual property is currently available for sale.



It's the OQO 02/e2 (and, basically, 2+) keyboard. It would add at least a millimeter to the depth of the unit because the keys are raised and have a noticeable travel. Instead of a d-pad it uses a trackstick which is much more usable for browsing or running many advanced apps while a d-pad doesn't add significantly to the capabilities you get from touch. You also get two "mouse" buttons as opposed to the single "click" button on the d-pad but if you are really tied to a d-pad, there are arrow keys. Rather than a additional row, there is a dedicated numeric keyboard and sticky Function, Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys (with LEDs to indicate they are active.

Plus, it would require making the N1000 a bit larger which means I might be able to read the screen.