brotherswing
Android Expert
There are many Mini Bluetooth Keyboards for sale from eBay, Amazon, and others. Typically priced between $10 and $20, they have a spotty reputation at best. Most of the negative things said about these keyboard is that they don't work very well with Android. There are limitations in Android's bluetooth abilities, these are not the fault of this product. To function you need Android 2.3. You may have to un pair and re-pair your keyboard from time to time. The keyboard is a HID device (as opposed to SSP) so you'll need a driver for it to work properly. There are a few options in the Android Market for this, but most of them are paid apps and you shouldn't need to buy the software to make your new hardware work. I did, however, find a free solution. The app Bluekeyboard JP does the job nicely, and is free. One thing to note, you'll need to set the keyboard type as Apple Wireless Keyboard, not qwerty. The reason for this is none of the function keys work on the qwerty setting, so no punctuation. Set as the Apple, every key works. One caveat to this work around, while the function keys do work, they are mapped slightly differently than they're labeled so some trial and error may be needed to get the hang of it. I give this product three stars because of the unnecessarily convoluted setup and lack of driver software included, but great battery life and ease of use (once set up). This is a good option to add hardware controls to any touchscreen only device. Also works great as a game controller too!
I picked mine up from Amazon.
I picked mine up from Amazon.
Andy, would you please move this to All Things Root?
