Sooner or later smartphones will replace computers. Select professionals like graphic designers, architects and (3D) animators will always need additional computing power, but for most of us, powerful mobile devices connected to external monitor, keyboard and mouse will work just fine. When you think about it, today’s high-end smartphones with dual-core processors have more power than so called “office machines” just few years ago. For people who just need a browser, email client and the capability to edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations, smartphones (and tablets for that matter) have everything it takes to get the job done.
Which brings me to the main point of this article – I’m curious to know whether some of you actually connect a Bluetooth keyboard to smartphone? Personally I like the idea as it lets me draft articles while on the go. However I did encounter few problems when tried to make such a setting work properly. Here are few problems I’ve noticed:
- Symbian^3 devices doesn’t seem to support text selection using the Shift key from a Bluetooth keyboard. I’ve tried this with the Nokia E7.
- Selecting text with the Shift key is possible on the iPhone, but you can’t add the selection to clipboard with CTRL+C.
- When it comes to Android, most devices running Google’s mobile OS, don’t support the Bluetooth HID profile (which is required for input devices) out of box. In order to get your Bluetooth keyboard connected to an Android phone, in most cases you’ll have to root it first.
- As for Windows Phone 7, it doesn’t support the HID profile at all and we can only hope the upcoming Mango update will fix this.
- And I’ve no idea how this works on BlackBerry phones.
Let’s say you manage to find your way around this issue and somehow connect a Bluetooth keyboard with your smartphone (presuming your phone actually supports the capability) – are you going to do this? Are you already doing it? And do you think that makes you more productive? What do you say?