Portable Bluetooth Qwerty

This was actually my first time writing from a bluetooth keypad to my Captivate and it felt liberating in its own way! After so long of agonizing over not having tactile buttons to type on, I finally had them at last from an unassuming source. Dealextreme.com put my suspicions on high alert when I first noticed the plethora of phony devices manufactured to mimic genuine models from the likes of Nokia, RIM, and Apple. Before I got the impulse to close the tab on the Firefox window, I did a search for bluetooth keyboards and came across an interesting find. Amidst a few models that seemed too bulky with built-in trackpads, there were two that looked absolutely perfect in size with a five row layout. Appearing to have the measurements of a credit card, one was silver and the other was black. A part of me still felt cautious about purchasing items from an unfamiliar site, but this was my only chance to take advantage of the opportunity. For 25 dollars, it was worth the risk.

Once the package arrived from Hong Kong, I admittedly was not impressed with its frugal appearance. If one was looking for the refinement of a Nokia, HTC, or Apple accessory, this was certainly not the one. My unboxing revealed three items: the keyboard, a USB cable, and a mini software CD. The qwerty was made entirely of plastic (which was to be expected for 25 dollars), and there was no sense of refinement to it whatsoever. No solid soft-touch surface reminiscent of Treo Pro nor any solid build resembling the N900. The unit was EXTREMELY light and felt like a second-hand toy from a local thrift store, and the phone snob from within had turned up its nose in disgust.

I dreaded having to find a way to get drivers installed on my Captivate since my MacBook did not have a sliding drawer in its slot to accommodate the disc. To make matters worse, there was no physical user manual since it was included on the disc that I still had no access to. Upon reading a forum Q&A from previous buyers on the product site at Dealextreme.com, I found a link to where the drivers could be downloaded. At that moment, I remembered the PC-only Android side loader app provided by a friend of mine and jumped to a PC in the house. After lengthy moments of fiddling with the sideloader app and then the BlueInput app downloaded from Android Marketplace to no avail, I was back at square one. Even upon realizing the house PC had a drawer slot to accept the mini CD, it was unable to read it. Contacting tech support for the site was an option, but after reading the forums I did not get the impression it would do any good. Being able to pair the keyboard to the Captivate but not have it connect was the worst kind of tease imaginable. I thought for sure I would have to request a return of the failed product and simply not mention it in my blog or YouTube channel, but something else happened.

The hack for Froyo 2.2 I performed on the Captivate was a godsend, for it immediately granted more efficient support for the keypad. Upon pairing the device with the phone and initiating a connection, I was taken aback to see a pop-up asking if I wanted to use a specific passcode! I was instantly thrilled beyond measure to finally have the two mobile units connected via bluetooth! Once a pop-up for bluetooth authorization appeared to have me grant automatic connectivity, I was set. All at once, the struggle I was forced to endure in going without a hardware qwerty had been obliterated! This was the start of a new era with my Captivate, and at that point my respect for it had grown beyond bounds. As impossible as I previously thought it would be, I was a step closer to being 100% content with my Samsung smartphone after it gained this new wireless companion! The yearning for an unlocked GSM Galaxy S Pro was no longer in full effect, and I was able to remain with the Android I had become comfortable with over time.

Writing with the keypad took some getting used to for the first couple of days, but my speed improved a bit over time. All of the keys worked perfectly in regards to alpha and numerical characters, but there were a number of quirks to get used to. First off, the "Ctrl" key did not function with the "C" and "V" commands for copying and pasting, and the delete key was right next to the space bar. Even though there was a "Caps Lock" key, pressing "Fn" did not enable it since a double tap on the "Shift" key took care of that. On the top row, there were additional "Fn" symbols that had limited to no functionality for brightness, music controls, and volume. There was a also a button with a symbol for what appeared to be the Mac Expose feature to display all open windows at once, but this did not work with "Fn" either. After a while, I just figured those particular features were only enabled for use with my MacBook instead of Android.

Tactile feedback was surprisingly impressive when I considered its cheap, plasticky construction. Each press was met with a most reassuring click that not only felt good but was also noticeable to one's ears. Endless pecking on keys for a lengthy email, blogpost or word document seemed to be potentially irritating with that sound, but it did not bother me at all. Having a full row of number keys was also a welcomed benefit as well.

At long last I had finally reached the ultimate compromise for my touch-only device in taking on prolonged writing! There was no more tolerating virtual qwerty buttons to churn out a number of paragraphs to express my opinion. Not that the TouchWiz software qwerty was that bad, it was just that hardware was that much better! I was pleasantly surprised by what I thought could have been a tech toy fraud, and the old lesson of not judging a book by its cover rang true once again. As long as I owned a touch-only phone, I could see this item being a crucial staple in my daily mobile tech routine.

TRENT SMITH
Sent from my Samsung Captivate
www.trentsense.com
www.trentsensevideo.com

Here is a link to the purchase site.