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Have you ever seen a TextBlade?

Accepted submission by steveha at 2016-04-11 23:53:03
Mobile

steveha [soylentnews.org] writes:

The WayTools TextBlade [waytools.com] is an innovative new idea for a mobile keyboard. It stores in a tiny volume, weighs 1.5 ounces [waytools.com], and combines position-sensing and chording instead of using simple keypresses. It only has 8 keys and a space bar, yet it can replace a full keyboard. Three pieces stack for storage and then snap together with magnets to make the keyboard. Here's a video demo. [youtube.com]

But the development and release process has been a disaster. Deadlines have been slipped repeatedly. The first TextBlade prototypes were shown off in January 2015, and WayTools originally promised to ship in February 2015 [bgr.com]. 14 months later it's April 2016 and the TextBlade hasn't shipped.

The current status: WayTools says that they are through with development but want to make sure that people are happy, so they are shipping very limited quantities to an early Test Release Group ("TREG"). This started in February 2016 [waytools.com]. Their web site now promises that if you order a TextBlade today, you will get it in June. All of the forum [waytools.com] posts from TREG testers are uniformly positive... but general shipping has not started yet.

There is so much unprecedented engineering in the TextBlade that it seems plausible that they could have needed a lot of time to test it. Yet the repeated schedule slips, now totalling 14 months, are highly suspicious and weird. How could they honestly have thought they were one month away from mass production and then slipped over a year?

The most charitable explanation I have is that WayTools is a small company with more engineering talent than scheduling or public relations talent. The least charitable explanation is that this is an elaborate scam and the TextBlade never will ship.

So I ask the SoylentNews community: have you ever seen a TextBlade? Did you attend one of their public demos, or do you know someone in the TREG, or perhaps are you in the TREG?

I want to believe! If TextBlade is real, I'd spend $100 to get one. If it's not real, it's the most elaborate prank I've ever seen.

Original Submission