More than a year ago we reported on Microsoft designing a â€œone handed and next gen soft keyboardâ€ for Windows Phone 8.

We now have a picture of the keyboard in question, courtesy of a leaked Microsoft Research presentation.

The keyboard is designed for one-handed thumb typing without having to look and features several keys clustered together, leveraging disambiguation to decide what word is in fact being typed.

The change would be Microsoftâ€™s most radical change to the Western SIP yet, and is reminiscent of the curved keyboards found in the old Microsoft UMPCs.

Apollo will also bring extended national Soft Keyboards including a new Korean design.

Seeing the keyboard demoed on a HTC Trophy of course also gives us hope this will in fact also be coming to Windows Phone 7.8.

Do our readers like the design? Let is know below.