Since the introduction of the iPhone, the race has been on to produce a finger friendly SIP (Software Input panel) with gesture support. The latter half of 2007 could probably be dubbed, "a time of playing catch up" for Windows Mobile software developers.  It is true that the iPhone offers significantly more screen real estate than most Windows Mobile devices, which offers a distinct advantage. Nonetheless, the finger friendly SIP has been a major concern for a while.  There are already a number of finger friendly SIP keyboards, including SPB Full Screen Keyboard, Teksoft Fingertouch, CooTek Touchpal and most recently ZoomBoard. Now Resco wades into the melee, with a major upgrade to their keyboard app, Resco Keyboard 5.0!

As expected from Resco, they present a well developed, full featured SIP, that is of a standard comparable to their other top applications. Now you would think I would want to get straight into the thumb keyboard touted as the innovation in this upgrade, but on investigation of Resco keyboard, I found a few features I felt noteworthy. I installed from a cab file, but Resco also offers a .exe that allows you to install via activesync, and registration was really straight forward, open the options for the keyboard, find the about tab, and enter your registration code and your done. Some would say, that a SIP should be installed to your device, but as I’m using it for review purposes, I didn’t want to install to device. I’ve had a bad experience with another SIP previously, which didn’t agree with my software environment at the time leading to a hard reset, the Resco Keyboard allowed me to install to card and seems to be suffering no ill affects as a result.

As you can see above, the Windows Mobile native SIP, and Resco keyboard take up the same space on the screen, but the Resco keyboard adds a couple of extra keys. If you look at the bottom row of keys in the screen shot, you can pick out the Fx key, the Hash key and the language key. In the options for Resco, you can set a primary and secondary language, And the language key lets you toggle between them. Which is really useful for someone like me, who comes from foreign climes, and really doesn’t like to compromise my knowledge of spelling as I was taught. It’s quite funny to have a hash key in there, and on hitting the shift key you get a symbol ~, that I cant even remember the name of.

Then there’s the Fx key, which is not the equivalent on the Fn key. The Fx key is a customisable option, that let’s you add certain elements to a document with simple pre-configured shortcuts. This is a sweet addition, and really useful for mobile Email, or quick sms. Gesture support works with the standard keyboards, but it took me quite a bit of fiddling to get the sensitivity just right, so that I wasn’t triggering gesture commands, when I thought I was just doing regular stylus tap typing. A disappointment for me is the lack of landscape support, I want to see a SIP, expand to a fill the same area proportionately as it does in portrait.

Even though these extra keys add some great features, their addition actually reduces the average key size and makes typing that little bit harder. Aesthetically there’s lots of pretty skins, and probably lot’s more to come.

 The thumb keyboard is probably what you want to hear about though? It’s another attempt to imitate the iPhone input panel, even similair in looks.

The similarities are obvious, almost to the point of being identical, something most of you would already have observed, and recall how iPhone users, were told it would take a bit of getting used to (the SIP).

Now I’ll have to admit, I didn’t actually want to review this application, my initial response after a quick try out was well, lack lustre to say the least. I persisted on some good advice, and found the very feature that I was most interested in, gesture support, was what was confounding me. I mentioned earlier that it took me a while to get the gesture sensitivity right, using the standard qwerty layout with the stylus. Well with the Finger layout, I had problems until I disabled the gesture support completely. Now I don’t really think I’m ham fisted, but the degree of dexterity the keyboard required, was well beyond my patience. If this had actually been an iPhone, it would have gone back to the shop quick smart. With gestures turned off, I found this to be a reasonable input program, albeit slow and indirect. The inclusion of sound support, the ability to have a sound play on letter input, is also, a good training indicator for learning to use Resco keyboard, but the sound of a faux typewriter soon becomes tiresome.

All in all I would have to say, that Resco like a few others are headed in the right direction with this application but it needs a lot of work, to be user friendly for the average user. It is a usable keyboard, but it demands a steep learning curve, as far as manipulating the keyboard, I won’t say rush out and get it, it’s a revolution in SIP technology, but I also wont say don’t give it a try. It’s worth checking out, but I wont be losing my stylus anytime soon.

Product Details:- Resco Keyboard version 5.0.

Retail Price:- $19.95 USD

Related posts:

1. Resco Keyboard Pro Version 5.0 Released!
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3. Resco Keyboard: Now With Skins, Skins, and More Skins
4. Review: SPB Full Screen Keyboard — The Search for the Perfect Input Method.
5. Review: SunnySoft Interwrite keyboard preview.