Though the iPhone’s virtual keyboard has been named one of the best in the business, it still lacks a fairly major feature: haptic feedback. The little vibration that lets you know a key has been pressed is on nearly every other touchscreen smartphone on the market, but not the iPhone.
Luckily we have the jailbreak community to produce apps and tweaks that makeup for iOS shortcomings. Though there have been haptic feedback utilities in Cydia for quite some time now, they’ve never really impressed me. They always seemed to make iOS slower and less reliable, until now…
Yesterday, a copy of the upcoming jailbreak tweak known as KeyVibrate landed in our laps. The tiny utility works in every iOS application that allow use of the virtual keyboard, and promises to help you “feel” your typing.
There is no home screen icon or settings to toy with. Once installed, KeyVibrate provides a minor vibration on the iOS keyboard every time a key is pressed. It seems to be light weight, and after 12 or so hours of usage I haven’t noticed any influence on stability or battery life – a huge plus.
The tweak has been submitted to the ModMyi repo, and should be available in Cydia soon for $0.99. What’s more impressive than a 3kb file that makes your virtual keyboard vibrate? The fact that the utility was coded by two kids who aren’t even in high school yet.
Are you interested in KeyVibrate? Do you use another haptic feedback utility?