The Chatboard

OK, so you're part of Generation Y: you don't just use your mobile phone to talk to people, you fill your phone with a whole …

OK, so you're part of Generation Y: you don't just use your mobile phone to talk to people, you fill your phone with a whole alphabet of addresses and numbers, you send SMS messages to your other Generation Y friends and you read and send e-mail messages with it.

Being Generation Y, you're always in a hurry, so naturally you scream abuse at your Generation X predecessors who designed phones which require you to type letters by multiple presses of number buttons.

Scream no more. A new product from Ericsson means you no longer have to figure out that N means pressing the number 6 three times, or C means pressing 2 four times. The Chatboard is a 49-key keyboard, about the size of a business card, which clips onto selected mobile phones and takes a lot of the frustration out of typing letters. It also features buttons to give one-touch access to e-mail or SMS.

The Chatboard is expected to retail at about $30 (€28.47) from mobile phone outlets.