TL;DR
- Google Japan has announced a double-sided circular keyboard.
- The product is the latest quirky keyboard from the regional division.
- This keyboard isn’t actually for sale, but Google has open-sourced blueprints so you can make your own.
Google Japan is known for its quirky keyboard inventions, such as a keyboard cup and a “stick” keyboard. Now, the division has revealed arguably its craziest keyboard yet.
The company revealed the so-called Gboard Double-Sided Version on October 1 in honor of the 101-key keyboard (10/1). This is a circular physical keyboard featuring keys on both the front and the back. In fact, this Mobius strip keyboard offers a total of 208 keys instead of 101.
“If you turn the keyboard upside down, you can’t type at all. After racking our brains trying to find a solution to this major problem, we came up with this keyboard,” Google Japan noted in a tongue-in-cheek blog post. The company also claimed that putting the keyboard down enables several people to sit in a circle and type on it.
This probably isn’t the last time we’ll see offbeat physical keyboards from Google Japan:
Going forward, we will continue to explore various designs, such as a single-row hoop version, a waterproof version that is convenient when washing your hair, and a double helix version with a loop and twist.
Keen on getting the Gboard Double-Sided Version? Google isn’t selling this keyboard, but it has open-sourced the device blueprints and uploaded them to Github so you can take a stab at making it.