New Bluetooth HID Keyboard

[MOTOhooligan]

from Mobile Tech News.com

Santa Clara, Calif. -- Think Outside Inc., maker of the revolutionary Stowaway(R) Portable Keyboards for handheld devices, announced that it has created a royalty-free keyboard driver that utilizes the Bluetooth Human Interface Device (HID) profile and that the company will make available to any OEM interested in including it in a smartphone or PDA design. As a result, device manufacturers will be able to include Think Outside's keyboard HID driver in their Bluetooth-enabled products to ensure that they will support an external keyboard in the future.

One of the design limitations of Bluetooth has been that OEMs had to license a Bluetooth software stack from a software supplier to make their devices operational, and a HID profile had to be either licensed or created. The HID profile lists a series of devices, and it is this list that tells the Bluetooth radio how to communicate with a specific device. If a Bluetooth product doesn't have a particular device listed in its profile, it can't communicate with it.

"Until now, OEMs who were interested in providing a Bluetooth keyboard had to purchase a license for a keyboard HID profile," said Greg van den Dries, vice president of sales and marketing for Think Outside. "To address this compatibility and cost issue, Think Outside has developed a HID profile for keyboards and is making it available, free of royalties, to OEMs. This offer will allow any device manufacturer to support external keyboards in their Bluetooth products, either now or in the future."

In related news, Think Outside today also announced its Stowaway Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard, a new Bluetooth-enabled Stowaway keyboard for use with compatible smartphones and PDAs. This full-sized, collapsible mobile keyboard is based on a reference design that is capable of being modified to meet an OEM's specifications, to speed their time to market with Bluetooth keyboard products for smartphones and PDAs.


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[WirelessBeachBum]

That's good news but some vendors such as Samsung have not been opening up their devices for third party devices...I was pretty irratated that my micro wireless infrared keyboard (which should be pretty much universally compatable on pocket pc's) did not work with the Samsung i700 and i600...I guess they want to sell their flexible keyboard.

[axvx8xoxr]

I've been debating getting a keyboard for my iPAQ Pocket PC...Does the wireless IR keyboard have to be pointed at the IR port all the time while you're using it?