Phorm iPad mini case has physical ‘key guides’ that appear and disappear when you need them

Apple’s touch-based devices have changed the way we interact with computers entirely, but that hasn’t stopped users from occasionally thinking wistfully of the days when physical keyboards ruled the roost. Tactus has taken that desire to heart, and the startup’s first consumer product, the Phorm, is about to bring a tactile experience back to your iPad mini’s software keyboard.

Tactus co-founders Dr. Craig Ciesla and Dr. Micah Yairi have been working on technology that can generate physical keys from a flat surface on demand, giving you a smooth, unbroken surface for general touch-based interaction, and a physical keyboard when you need one. The company’s innovation uses a microfluidic panel to achieve its magic, routing liquid through invisible channels to expand specific areas of the top layer of a touch panel, producing protrusions and bumps where previously there were none.

Phorm is the first product from Tactus that is ready for the consumer market, and it’s available for pre-order now, with a target launch date of summer 2015 for the first crop of batch of devices. The Phorm is an iPad mini case that incorporates Tactus’ tech into a thin front panel, similar both in size and in method of application to a standard screen protector. It’s paper-thin, and it offers virtually no change in the optics of your display when you look at an iPad inside the Phorm. The Phorm itself also doesn’t add that much additional size to the iPad mini’s sleek frame, adding about as much bulk as you might expect from a fairly durable protective case.

Author: Darrell Etherington

Source: TechCrunch