Apple has announced that its 2.2 iPhone firmware has a new feature for its fully virtual QWERTY keyboard: the keyboard will behave more like a real, physical keyboard than a software application interface.

The new firmware version–expected to be released by December– adds a little intelligence to the iPhone keyboard, allowing it to keep track of usage: how many times a key has been used, and even how hard specific keys are pressed.

Donald Lindsay, Interface Designer at Apple, explained: the technology was always in place–we can track keyboard usage, and the multi-touch screen can also be told to measure the pressure with which it is touched. We just needed to figure out if we wanted to use this intelligence, and if yes, for what.

Apple’s new solution will allow the iPhone’s virtual keyboard to show signs of wear and tear: If you use the key “E” most, over time it will start to appear faded, and the letter can in fact disappear entirely, leaving a blank button in its place. In fact,  keys such as “shift” and “space”, which are used frequently, are also generally hit harder than others. the new iPhone keyboard will respond to such rough use intelligently–these keys will become slow to respond and would have to be tapped multiple times in order to get an input.

At first glance, it looks as if Apple is downgrading quality rather than adding features, but Apple, the experts on user experience and interface design, have a ready explanation. Talking to the press, Apple CEO Steve Jobs explained:

We are proud of what we have achieved with the iPhone, but talking to a number of our users, especially those who had switched from BlackBerry to iPhone, we realized that we had failed to offer something important: a keyboard that is capable of wear and tear. People expect the keys to fade, and they are used to having keys stuck–especially the Space and Return keys. With this new intelligence for its keyboard, the iPhone is truly ready to take on BlackBerry and enter the enterprise segment in a big way.

Apple has already shipped many iPhones with this new firmware to reputed tech writers and technology columnists, as well as to some unnamed enterprises that are participating in the experiment, and is closely monitoring the way the iPhone keyboard responds to wear and tear across the various languages supported on the iPhone.

Industry  sources revealed that  the option to “set” your keyboard’s wear and tear to a certain level–says three months, or six months–gives people switching over from BlackBerry total control over how their keyboard should behave, to the extent that they would be better off buying an iPhone rather than a new BlackBerry, which would take months of work on the keyboard.

Charles Massey, a longtime BlackBerry user, conceded that this feature makes the iPhone  more like a BlackBerry than BlackBerry itself. “The great thing”, he added, “is that the Phone will also have a “Reset Keyboard” option which will make the iPhone keyboard brand new in just a moment. Unless RIM now introduces a feature to let users control the wear and tear on their BlackBerry phones, they are in for a rough ride ahead.”

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