touch keyboard.. How in the world???

[fastfed]

So my Surface was asleep, in laptop form (kickstand out keyboard laying flat)

I went to press the windows key to wake it up and stopped to do something else quickly, realized the keyboard was lit up. Not sure why it never went to sleep like the tablet did, but I waited and sure enough the keyboard finally did go off. then I hovered my hand over it, like 5 inches above it, sure enough, it lights up.

How in the world does it know this? I know my GS4 has that hover feature, but the keyboard?

 

[beman39]

no kiddin, today I walked by my wifes Surface and I walked pretty close to it and the KB lit up! lol

 

[EddySnoozah]

I am sure that I read somewhere before the launch that the new covers have some kind of 'proximity' sensor in them so that they can tell when your hands are close to the keys and the backlight comes on in case you want to start typing. Playing around with mine, I get the impression that the sensor is located towards the bottom left part of the cover. I can hover my hand above other parts of the cover and nothing happens, but if I go over the bottom left corner then it lights up. Maybe infra-red?

 

[chrisleung]

Very cool.