Design studio Art. Lebedev announced Wednesday what it calls Optimus mini three keyboard as a part of ambitious Optimus keyboard project which ultimate goal is to create a keyboard with interactive keys that can be reprogrammed. The first part of this project features three keys instead of more than a hundred and allows users to perform some tasks a little bit easier.

Optimus mini three keyboard is a pad with three keys each of which incorporates 20mm x 20mm small OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) screens with 96x96 pixels resolution that can display various information depending on the application and can be reprogrammed to substitute a sequence of keys.

The main advantage the Optimus mini three has is that it can be reprogrammed to perform certain actions depending on the launched software using special configuration utility and reflect the changes in the actions to be performed on the OLED screens.

Full-size Optimus keyboard where all the keys will embed a small display and can be reprogrammed, is being developed. The design studio is looking forward to laying their “hands on a sample before year-end”.

The keyboard can be preordered on the web-site of Art. Lebedev studio starting this week, according to the developer, at the price of $100 until April 2, 2006, when the price “gets higher”. Keyboards ready for shipment will arrive on May 15, the studio claims. Pricing of the fill-size Optimus keyboard will be lower than that of a “good mobile phone”.