Apple's got some tricks up its sleeve for the iPhone's touchscreen software keyboard, according to a recently-uncovered patent application. The filing discusses a method for using finger gestures to augment the on-screen keyboard's functionality. The gestures would be be performed on top of the bit of the screen containing the letter keys. Some suggestions in the application include using short left and right motions as backspace and space, respectively. Enter and shift functions could be performed with vertical gestures, though the filing also discusses leaving those open to user customization.

While anything that makes a software keyboard easier to use is awesome in our book, this upgrade seems a little limited in its usefulness. Everything Apple's talking about letting you do with gestures is already controllable with direct on-screen buttons. It would have been nice to use this opportunity to introduce some new keyboard functionality, like the desperately-needed cut-and-paste. There's also the thought that introducing optional gestures for some already-existing keys is the start of a slippery slope into gesture alternatives for even more keys, leading to a complicated gesture system like Graffiti, used on old Palm PDAs. Do any iPhone owners want to sound off with their thoughts on the keyboard software? Have you really taken to it in its present form, or would the kind of gestures we're talking about help speed up your text input?

This story around the web: