I’m thinking of two concentric circles of keys with the most often used one towards the center, with punctuation etc. around the outside. Has anyone done this? What say you?
That’d only be more confusing. People are used to qwerty; any other arrangement is going to be very frustrating.
The best way to redesign is to make the keys a tad bigger. The Blackberry Curve has a very nice keyboard that has a good feel and keys the right shape.
The company that makes the AlphaGrip is trying to develop better small form factors for typing.
A device which can be rapidly typed upon is unlikely to be QWERTY, though. Personally, learning the AlphaGrip was very easy. It only took a day or two to learn the alphanumeric positions. Within a month I could type at a passable clip (i.e. my muscle memory had begun to solidify.)
Most likely a blackberry sort of device would have a few keys on the front and a couple of columns of keys on the back, which you would need to hit blind. The problem will be that you have to pinch the device between your fingers to hold it still while you alternate fingers to type. The AlphaGrip is wide enough that you can compress it from the sides and leave your fingers free to operate. So any device small enough to fit in your pocket is going to be unlikely to be comfortable to type on, unless it unfolds into something much wider.