Generally speaking, what kind of design would you think of when it comes to the hidden phone keyboard? Side slip? Up and down? Or rotation? BlackBerry's latest patent application brings us some different ideas. Their new design is somewhat like an accordion. The retractable keyboard is hidden inside the body. When users need to type, they can use the complete QWERTY keyboard by pulling it out.

It is reported that this design is not only applicable to traditional smart phones such as the one above, but also the phones with keyboards on both sides of the screen (similar to the parts sliding out of LG Doubleplay). We estimate that BlackBerry will not launch products with this patent in the near future. If not unexpected, Q10 should represent the direction of their future development of QWERTY models (at least for now). But to be honest, the idea of hiding the keyboard while "slimming down" the mobile phone is really very good. I hope we can have a chance to see the finished product in the future.