This week in the Asian Wall Street Journal/WSJ.com (sub only) I write about keyboards. One little gadget I’ve taken a shine to in this area is the Bluetooth Smart Keyboard, made by an apparently anonymous company somewhere in China:
As I mentioned in the column, it’s not great, but it’s surprising what they’ve managed to do in such a basic device. As you can see from the picture, the design is straightforward, although what it doesn’t show is a simple stand that slides out of the base.
Here are the devices it works with for now:
- Nokia 6600, 6670, 7610, 3650, 7650, 6260, N-Gage, N-GageQD
- Sendo X
- Siemens SX1
- SonyEricsson P800, P900, P910i
- O2 X Phone, O2xda, O2xda II, O2xda IIi, O2xda IIs
- Dopod 565
- Orange SPV C500, SPV E200
- HP iPAQ 1940, 5550, 2210, 2215, rx3417, rx 3715, hx4700 series
- Acer n30 series
- Palm Zire72, Tungsten T, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5
- Pocket Loox 720, 420
- Clie UX50
- Motorola A1000
- Dell Axim X50, X50v
- Asus MyPal A730
Using Bluetooth means your device doesn’t need to be in the cradle — it can be on the other side of the room, if you like, or charging. The software is simple enough, but offers some shortcut keys to basic functions, as well as key combinations that you can assign to specific tasks, such as opening contacts or whatever. Using it with a Nokia 7650, I was able to tap out SMS messages and send them without having to touch the phone. It’s not a leap of technology, but it sure makes preparing long text messages — or even emails, using the Nokia’s GPRS function — easier.
Symptoms:- crashes to a full screen icon of the phone’s power switch with a 10 second timer next to it, meaning hold the power button in for 10 seconds to turn it off. This flashes to a ‘!’ on a yellow triangle.- happens any time, day or night, whether I’m using the phone or not.- today the phone will not turn on. it will not now detect that it is being charged, although the docking unit’s green light is on so it has power and is recognising that the phone is docked.- For your info, the phone spends a lot of it’s time going in-and-out of signal as I live in a basement flat where the signal is intermittent. Is this bad for it?If anyone could suggest reasons for this or ways to fix it then I’d be most greatful!
Hmmm.. interesting post. I agree with you there, “The software is simple enough, but offers some shortcut keys to basic functions, as well as key combinations that you can assign to specific tasks, such as opening contacts or whatever.” well said. I’m been looking for topics as interesting as this. Looking forward to your next post.
-seff-