Iphone Clipboard Concept for Cut, Copy, Paste

One of the current drawback of certain touch devices (Iphone) is it's lack of copy/paste functionality. The difficultly in creating this functionality on a mobile device is that the interaction technique has to be non-intrucive to the core interface. 

Unlike a desktop application where you can toss commands into a menu the interaction model on a phone has to be more direct and gestural.  The copy/paste model I'm proposing tries to address some of these issues. 

When a user is viewing a core text area:

1. They can scroll (tap + drag ).
2. They can move the insertion pointer (tap)
3. They can use the magnifier loupe to position the insertion pointer (tap+hold)

In my illustration you could activate additional copy/paste gestures:

1. You can bring up the copy/paste pallet ( tap+tap near the insertion pointer)
2. Once the panel is open you can mark a selection (tap+dragging) from the insertion point creates a selection. Similarly you could create a selection with two fingers marking both corners..
3. When in copy/paste mode the keyboard is replaced by your recently cut/copied blocks of text or images.  You can tap a piece of text to insert it into your document 

Note: The tap+tap gesture is sometimes used in application to zoom however it is never used to zoom while editing text or viewing read-only text such as in emails or contact lists. 

Unfortunately at this point it's not possible for third party application developers to write an extension such as this so it's a concept sketch only at this point. 

P.S. Did you know we're now developing and designing mobile apps?  Check out our latest design work for a new fitness startup focused on running.