Apple sneaks in some very subtle, yet incredibly useful features in iOS from time to time. One such feature comes bundled with the split keyboard for the iPad in iOS 5.0.1/iOS 5.

If you see the split keyboard, you’ll notice that the inner extremes of both the keyboard parts have some extra space left.

Turns out, this empty space actually houses extra keys according to the standard QWERTY layout, to play well with the typing practices of all users.

These duplicate keys let you tap an adjacent key on the other side of the split.

Such attention to fine detail is characteristic of Apple. Another, very similar, example of Apple playing around with the iOS keyboard buttons to add extra functionality is, the Siri dictation key on the iPhone 4S, which doubles up as a spacebar when typing.

Tip:

Here’s how to enable the split keyboard:

• Tap and hold on the keyboard button at the bottom right corner of your iPad’s keyboard (the one you generally tend to use for hide the keyboard).
• You should get two options: Undock and Split.
• Tap on Split to use the split keyboard.

[Finger Things via Brooks Review]