One pivotal point of any smartphone’s success or failure is in the keyboard. How does it feel? How accurate is your typing? How quickly can you type? How good is the layout of the keys? How many rows does it have? And the questions go on and on. Since the purpose of a smartphone is to elevate a traditional phone to more “computing” power, the ability to provide quick and reliable input is central to a phone’s needs.

A company called Crocodile Keyboards has invented a patent pending keyboard layout that they think will drastically improve typing on both software and hardware keyboards for smartphones. The layout utilizes triangles that not only puts “dead” space between buttons, causing less mis-presses, it is also more compact which allows it to be implemented in a variety of ways/form factors:

The company has a homepage that is sparsely populated but they mention it is designed for touchscreens but can also be used on hardware. Obviously it is MUCH easier for them to start on the software things since all it would take is popping an APK into Android Market and hoping for the best. Success in the market could help manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Motorola and others to adopt the layout. For a price of course.

The folks at MobileCrunch have gotten word that the Crocodile Keyboard Android Application will launch on Android Market December 7th. I can promise you I am eager to try it out and I suggest you do too. I’m not sure how much it will help but by the looks of it… it can’t hurt.

It does make me a tad dizzy when i stare at it though…