ZoomBoard is a convenient touchscreen keyboard for Windows Mobile Pocket PC that allows accurate and quick finger typing on your device. This article explains briefly about its inner workings and main features.
Overview
Typing on a mobile phone keyboard has always been a clumsy and overall annoying experience for me. While some of the latest Smartphone models include QWERTY and virtual touchscreen keyboards they are simply no match for the PC keyboard having large and spacious keys, allowing a comfortable and quick typing experience. Now Vito Technologies has come up with an effective solution called ZoomBoard. It is a convenient touchscreen keyboard application for Windows Mobile Pocket PC that allows quick and accurate finger typing experiences on your device.
As the name implies, the program initiates a pop-up lens displaying a zoomed image of the letter pressed by the user so that it can be easily accessed by finger touches. The app also has three zooming modes, comes with two cool in-built skins and also includes gesture support. It also supports more than 30 language layouts and has a graphically pleasing user interface which is a treat for the eyes.
ZoomBoard is an innovative product from Vito Technologies and can be purchased from their website for $9.95. The developers also provide a fully functional 14-days trial version that can be downloaded from the programs description page.
It's also compatible with all Pocket PCs operating on Windows Mobile Classic 5.0/6.0/6.1 and Windows Mobile Professional 5.0/6.0/6.1 platforms.
Since this is a new product, I recommend my readers download and test the trial version and also check their device compatibility before buying the final product.
Examining ZoomBoard App
After connecting my device to a desktop PC, I downloaded the .EXE installer from THE developer’s website and used Microsoft ActiveSync to install the application on my Pocket PC. The developers recommend that you give a soft-reset to your device after completing the installation. After restarting my device, I noticed a ZoomBoard icon on my system tray and the app can be quickly accessed by tapping on this icon.
As I mentioned earlier, the application provides three zooming modes; Full zoom - to zoom the whole keyboard, Lens Zoom - initiates a zoom pop-up lens over the keyboard and Float Zoom which initiates a zoom pop-up lens right over the letter you have pressed.
The pop-up zoom lens shows a large view of the area tapped, allowing you to select the letter you want to type by moving your fingers. Once you have selected a letter you have to hold your finger on it until the letters turns to red, indicating that the letter selection has been made. This hardly takes a fraction of a second and the letter is quickly selected and entered into the typing field.
Tapping on the 123 ZoomBoard key will provide access to the settings button and it can be pressed any time to display the main settings menu.
Here I could change the language layout and select my desirable zoom mode from the available options. I could then select the ‘Smart Zoom’ option that makes it possible to enlarge the pressed letters either immediately or after a slight delay.
Finally If you don't want to use ZoomBoard, you can tap on the ‘Default Keyboard’ option in main settings menu that will initiate the default Windows Mobile keyboard from within the ZoomBoard app.
Final Verdict
While there is no doubt that ZoomBoard is accurate and finger friendly while providing comfortable access to keys, the zooming and letter selecting process takes some time and I cannot say that the application was real quick.
However, this can certainly be improved with practice, although upon first use I actually found the program reduced my typing speed. As time passed and with practice I did notice that my typing speed kept improving.
I was deeply impressed by the applications beautiful and simple user interface but keys could have been slightly bigger in full zoom mode as it only covers approximately 75% to 80% of the screen area.
Another plus point is that the app can be used all over the world, supporting almost all language layouts.
The price of $9.95 will also attract buyers as it is quite reasonably priced when compared to other touchscreen keyboard applications.
Since the software has just recently been released I believe we will be seeing many more upcoming versions and we can hope that the developers improve these shortcomings and come up with a more functional product. In any respect it's still worth a closer look.
SOURCE: Vito Technologies