The smartphone has long since evolved from a phone to become our most immediate computer. We check our email, manage our tasks, edit documents, we plan our agenda, etc. We have turned it into our main productivity tool. And yet, our smartphone could be much more productive.
Or at least, it is what Microsoft thinks, which just launched its Hub Keyboard to prove it. One more keyboard? Yes but no. Indeed, Hub Keyboard is just one of the many keyboards that can install on your Android device. But no, because unlike others, its main goal is not to help us type faster (that also) but to achieve that we are more productive.
Of what form? Making the keyboard our productivity Center. For it includes a number of shortcuts that allow us for example, directly access our clipboard history, access documents that we share and that are stored in Office 365 or OneDrive, or directly access the text translation tool.
The intention of Microsoft is that this keyboard, which is currently in beta stage is that it will soon be integrated with other services such as could be Google Drive or Evernote, so that the user always had to hand the information that they needs.
In this way, users won’t have to switch between different Apps to access the information that need to share, but we can directly access it from the keyboard, thus saving a few touches on the screen. At the moment Microsoft Hub Keyboard is only available in English and for the United States, but soon will expand to other countries.