Here at Phones Review we spend our working hours, plus many more hours besides, looking at new mobile technology and we never cease to be impressed when something really groundbreaking and innovative comes along. This is the case with the alien-like Tactile user keyboard, which proves its not just phones and tablets that take all the glory. Every now and then a peripheral or accessory can wow us just as much.

Most of us these days have got used to using a touchscreen device but that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes miss the tactile nature of a physical keyboard and that’s where Tactus Tactile Layer technology comes into play. Thanks to Tactus there will be a way of enabling the best of both worlds on a mobile touchscreen device as the company has developed a way to get transparent physical buttons to rise above the surface of a phone or tablet when you choose.

This tactile user interface can be used with a touchscreen device by replacing the cover glass and doesn’t require any change to the touch sensor or underlying display. It creates a dynamic physical surface so that when engaged the physical buttons can be used as any other physical keyboard but when you don’t choose to use the tactile keys then they recede leaving a flat, smooth touchscreen surface once more, without a trace they were once there. We’ve embedded a video showing more below this story and we’re pretty sure you’ll agree this is amazing technology offering a unique experience.

In our title we refer to this as alien-like because of the bizarre way the keyboard seems to come to life with the buttons elevating above the surface. Of course this technology is not limited to smartphones and tablets but could also be used for gaming consoles and navigations systems. The Tactile Layer touchscreen features low power consumption and can be scaled in size from smartphones to TV screens and can also be customized. You can read more about it at Tactus here.

We think this kind of tactile interface could be extremely popular and wonder if we may begin to see it used in the next-generation of smartphones and tablets but we’d like to know what you think. Are you entirely happy with using touchscreen-only now or do you still sometimes hanker after a physical keyboard? Would you purchase a smartphone that could adapt to this kind of technology? Let us know with your comments.