Bluetooth Keyboard Shortcuts on Samsung Vibrant
(And Possibly for Samsung Galaxy Tab)
Smartphones now come in bigger screens of up to 4 inches or more. It is no longer uncommon for a phone to have a 1 Ghz processor with storage of up to 32 GB on an external sd card. With these improved features, it is now convenient to use the smartphone as a replacement for the desktop PC or a laptop.
There is, however, one drawback. The built-in buttons and keyboards, whether slide-out hardware keyboard or screen keyboard on the phone, are too small to allow for easy typing. This is where a Bluetooth keyboard becomes a very useful tool. With the upswell of tablets and tablet wanabees on the market recently, this could also be possibly applied on tablets.
In my case, I have a Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard which I am using with a Samsung Vibrant, aka Galaxy S or Samsung T959. I originally used the keyboard with a Nokia N82. When I bought the keyboard, it required drivers specific for the Nokia phone. Luckily, I was able to download a driver from the iGo website (iGo bought Think Outside). With that, I was able to use all the features of the keyboard. Although I haven’t had the chance to try it, these shortcuts might also be usable on a Galaxy Tab.
It is important to note that, even without an installer, the keyboard will work with other devices but this will be limited to simple typing of text. When my Vibrant phone was updated to Android 2.2, I was able to use my Bluetooth keyboard. While tinkering with it, I was able to devise some shortcuts to replace what operations would have been possible only with an installer. Please see the following:
First of all, observe that the keys in the Think Outside or iGo keyboard are color coded. If you press any of the keys, what appears on the screen re the default applications. For example, if you press “Q”, what appears is the letter “Q”. But if you press the blue “Fn” key and press “Q”, what appears is the number “1” which is color blue under the letter “Q” key. And when you press the green “Fn” key and “Q”, what you get is “!” which is color green on the “Q” key. And so on. But not everything works right. That’s what this piece is about. We will discuss some workarounds.
A word of caution. I cannot guarantee that this will work with other devices. Let us be clear about what hardware I am using: Samsung Vibrant and Think Outside Stowaway ultraslim Bluetooth keyboard. The keyboard is also known as the iGo Bluetooth keyboard. My phone is on Android 2.2. As for software, I am using Documents to Go v3 for document creation and editing. Being done with that, let’s get underway.
Most important shortcut: Green Fn key+Home.
These two keys are beside each other. This replaces the “home” button on the phone. Wherever you are on the phone, pressing these two keys brings you to the default home screen. You will find why this is the most important shortcut in the following.
Add applications shortcuts to the home screen. You will see that on the keyboard, highlighted in blue, are the following applications: Calendar, Contacts, Inbox, Notes, Word, Excel, IE. Simply pressing on these keys won’t work. What you do is press green Fn+home. If you have already placed shortcuts of the said applications on the home screen, press the direction arrows on the keyboard to get to the application you want to launch and press enter.
Illustration: Let’s say you’re browsing a webpage and you want to open the calendar. Press green Fn+home and you’re at the home screen. Scroll to calendar and it will launch. This presumes that you had earlier placed a calendar shortcut on the home screen. Of course, you can cut it anyway you like to suit your taste.
Home Screen Menu. On the phone, you press the menu button to get to settings, set wallpaper, add item etc. On the Bluetooth keyboard you press blue Fn+A, press the arrows where you want to go and press “enter”
Google Search. Press Alt+A or press green Fn+A
Call log. Press blue Fn+D
Put phone on sleep mode immediately or to wake from sleep mode. Press blue Fn+F or press green Fn+end
To reboot phone. Press together Ctrl+Alt+Delete
To bring up the symbols table. Press Alt THEN press space bar. Do not press both keys at the same time.
Documents to Go shortcuts. With Documents to Go open, you can perform the following operations:
Blue Fn+A = open menu
Blue Fn+Esc = save, discard or cancel document
Press shift twice = all caps
To highlight text to cut, copy or edit etc, press shift while Pressing the arrow button in the desired portion to be highlighted.
Miscellaneous.
Camera – You can use the keyboard as a remote camera shutter for self portrait. Set the phone on a tripod etc. Go in front of the phone bringing your Bluetooth keyboard. Press enter to click the shutter.
On a webpage, pressing the spacebar scrolls down.
In Android Market home page, simply type what you're looking for; it automatically goes to the search bar.
Searching for other shortcuts is still a work in progress. Your contributions will be most welcome. I hope this contribution is helpful to you and others.
larrisa12002 said:
In my case, I have a Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard which I am using with a Samsung Vibrant, aka Galaxy S or Samsung T959. I originally used the keyboard with a Nokia N82. When I bought the keyboard, it required drivers specific for the Nokia phone. Luckily, I was able to download a driver from the iGo website (iGo bought Think Outside). With that, I was able to use all the features of the keyboard. Although I haven’t had the chance to try it, these shortcuts might also be usable on a Galaxy Tab.
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Click to collapse
Forgive me, I'm very curious but a little unclear how you created these shortcuts in Android. I am using a Dsi Mini Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse (WKB-1500) so it may not apply. However, if you are referring to an Android App/driver, then perhaps I'll find something similar for my keyboard. Regardless, thanks for the post. I'm looking forward to seeing the Galaxy S replace my laptop.
I didn't actually do any technical stuff, just trial-and-error punching keys and combinations of keys and observing results. I also tried copying keyboard presses of a phone with a hardware keyboard. Thats how I discovered that double pressing shift brings up all caps.
Understood. Trial and error often provides the first documentation. Thanks for the effort.
Any chance you could tell us what, if anything, the keyboard suggests the Fn+ buttons normally represent (shown in blue above the normal character). For instance, on my keyboard Fn-Left sends the Home key and Fn-A sends the ~ character. These should be the keystrokes being received by Android and then mapped to the results you found.
I tried find that driver on the iGo site but all I saw was drivers for Pocket PC and Blackberry. Do you have a url for the driver?
Thanks
Working driver for Stowaway
hlwilliams (and anyone else trying to use Stowaway keyboard with Android devices):
I had given up all hope and found BlueKeyboard JP. It's available in the Market.
Follow the instructions on the developer's blog site. (sotolog.net SLASH bluekeyboard SLASH 2010 SLASH 06 2010 07 2010 log3 DOT html) and you can probably go to work within minutes. (Sorry but I am not yet allowed to post URL's. The developers's blog is also specified in the Market page for BlueKeyboard JP.)
I have gotten it working on the Galaxy Tab running 2.2 and Nexus One running 2.3.3. And they worked exactly as documented immediately.
Caution: My partner tried with the HTC Desire and it seems to have had bad interactions with his Motorola Bluetooth stereo headset. (Headset now only plays music in phone headset mono mode.) We have not (yet) narrowed down whether this is an interaction with HTC Sense, the Android ROM version, this particular Motorola model, etc.
Related
Hi,
on my WM device, when the sliding keyboard is opened and i am on the Today screen, the keyboard enters a "number lock state". what that means is that the when the w,e,r,s,d,f,z,x,c keys are pressed, they are mapped to number keys which are outputted instead of the letters. I would like to disable this. It is possible i believe, since when Pocket Word or other editors are open and in focus, it works fine..the the letters are outputted when pressed and if you would like to enter a number, you press FN key then the letter corresponding to the number.
However, when the today screen is showing, it does not work. My question is...does anyone know what events are fired or what messages are sent when the keyboard is slid open? Or what causes devices with sliding keyboard to exhibit the behavior described above when on the Today screen, but not when an app such as Pocket Word is open.
i have tried spying various windows while sliding out and closing the keyboard, but have not noticed anything relevant.
thank you
Hi,
For owners with a device with a slide-out keyboard, when you are ON TODAY SCREEN and press one of the overloaded keys that also acts as the number keys, is a number outputted and does it take you directly to the phone screen?
That is the behavior of my device. I have to think that since this behavior only occurs on the Today screen, it can be turned off so that the keyboard act as it normally would (i.e. when the user is in Word for instance).
What i am not sure about is whether this is a native Windows Mobile behavior or controled by the keyboard driver or some other lib.
On my Cingular 8125 if I push a number key (along with the red 'alt' key to designate it as a number) it does in fact open the phonepad with that number entered in.
Qtek 9100 (HTC Wizard) -- doesn't switch into numlock mode when the keyboard slides out. On this kbd, the top row (QWERTY) is overloaded with the digits 1-0. Pressing the Q key doesn't do anything; however, pressing the symshift (dot key on lower left) then Q opens the phone app & enters the digit '1'.
My old phone (Siemens SX66 -- HTC Blue Angel) exhibits the behavior you describe.
I'm wondering what driver function might be called to toggle between these modes. I notice many of these keyboard drivers implement these functions, including the one used in my device:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...wceddk40/html/cxgrflayoutmanagerfunctions.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ceddk40/html/cxgrfkeyboarddriverfunctions.asp
Could one of these be responsible for toggling the mode?
I'm sure the question has been asked 10,000,000 times already, but neither the search function nor a general Google are returning a solution.
I love my 8125, really I do, all except for numeric entry, which I do just often enough to hate the horizontal number arrangement.
Someone somewhere has to have written a little hack to add a numbers mode. Does anybody here happen to know who and where?
I dont have a Wizard but let me guess..
The easier way is to use your on screen keypad input. Im not sure how you are using your phone, probably landscape, but if you were to use potrait mode, the on screen keypad is really good.
That really isn't very practical in my case. I need to use the hardware buttons. I bought a Wizard because it had a real keyboard, it just isn't very good for numbers.
Is this really something that cannot be done? I guess the TyTn does it right from the pictures, but my Wizard is like three weeks old, and I really am having a very hard time entering numbers here.
You can't enter numbers on the onscreen keypad if you can't see it. The assumption made by MobileSpeak Pocket is that if you have a lot of data entry to do that you will buy a Bluetooth keyboard. I bought my Wizard so I wouldn't need to carry one.
i been tryin to find this as well.. similar to the hermes numeric layout. i would like the fact that i can answer and end phone calls by using the sliding keyboard. but that not happening on our wizard yet.
anyway i kinda hav a partial solution to what you want which i hav implemented at the moment.
you need both software vito quick contact (latest) and pqzII wizard version. first use the code menu in pqzII to map ur alt + Y U I as 1 2 3 and H J K as 4 5 6 and so on. and alt+space as return.
now to dial normal numeric number jus open up vito quick contact hold ur alt button to toggle alt button and press those buttons above and press space twice to dial.
it may not be convenient but once u get the hang of it you can even dial with your eyes close literaly. well say like when you are driving you can dial it and use bluetooth headset or handsfree speaker. i know you all gonna say voice dial is better. but i dreaded voicedial and physical button never fails me.
just hopes some one will come out with the sliding answering method.
Okay, I am a little confused here (and maybe this is just PQII and maybe it's not..)
The keyboard has a shift and a dot. In addition to these, Mobile Speak Pocket remaps hardware buttons as Control, Alt, Shift, and Tab. I wonder if these are the same buttons that PQII uses. In the event that they are, PQII will do exactly what I want sinze Alt is sticky in MSP.
Ideally though, I want to basically change the layout of the symbols when you press the dot, and just use double-dot to put my phone into the appropriate mode.
uummm i uses caps/shift for my alt button in pqzII, i dun use control. maybe thats why it didnt work. u can try the windows key or the ok key if other software remaps your cap/shift and dot button.
remember this can only work in vito quick contact as the our normal dialer cant detect those other symbols button. basically after i play around with the wizard too much =P, i found out that it is in the double dot format when you are in dialer but pressing the symbols wont work other than the normal numbers and * and #. so thats why you need vito quick contact
i was wondering... as a user of a vista tablet i see that the use of the onscreen vista input panel is very very convenient.
i give that ease of use to one perticular and simple feature making the button you pressed last stay lit until you press the next button and also (but far less improtant) the lack of space between the keys...
this "last word highlighting allows you to type without looking at text after each letter to verify that you indeed pressed the right letter or even pressed one at all, and greatly improves the input speed.. i manage to write on my tablet keyboard almost as fast as a hardware one...
so if anyone knows of a keyboard that does that or a registry key that can allow any of the existing keyboard out there to do this, i believe will make a great contribution to mankind... or at least the average virtual keyboard user...
Does anyone know how to show the software keyboard during a remote desktop session that is running in full screen mode?
I second this,
does anybody know how, i have connected to my work TerminalServer in full screen landscape, but cannot get a keyboard!!!
any ideas please
i wish to keep using Remote Desktop Mobile!
don't use full screen...
then it's almost fullscreen but with the little icon for the keyboard on the bottom.
I had the same problem. and this worked for me.
i just activate the virtual keyboard of windows when i remote control my computer (go to start --> all programs --> accessories --> Ease of Access (ore sth. like that i dunno the english term) --> onscreen keyboard.
altough, this keyboard is pretty hard to use because it's very small.
I'm desperately trying to find this out too. If you don't run in full screen, you have the big black bar across the top and the big black bar across the bottom. You waste loads of screen space, plus when trying to close a program you often end up hitting the "ok/x" button of win mo. Does anyone have any experience with remote desktop mobile? Any reg tweaks to show a keyboard button?
i haven't tried this myself, but this SHOULD work in theory...
map a button (go to Settings->Personal->Buttons) to "<Input Panel>" (should be at the top of the list of mappable items). i guess only the Send key's Long Hold will be available for most people for mapping purposes...
once mapped to a hardware button of your choice, fire up remote desktop in fullscreen mode and give that button a press...see if the windows mobile on-screen keyboard pops up...
let us know what happens...cheers from pakistan!
ASCIIker said:
i haven't tried this myself, but this SHOULD work in theory...
map a button (go to Settings->Personal->Buttons) to "<Input Panel>" (should be at the top of the list of mappable items). i guess only the Send key's Long Hold will be available for most people for mapping purposes...
once mapped to a hardware button of your choice, fire up remote desktop in fullscreen mode and give that button a press...see if the windows mobile on-screen keyboard pops up...
let us know what happens...cheers from pakistan!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried this; however the keyboard flashes momentarily and refuses to remain.
try zaDesktop (free), which imo works much better: more configuration options, including screen resolution setting (up 10 1024x768), plus easy access to keyboard - long press on the screen during session and choose "Show keyboard" (see attached pic)
as for Remote Desktop Mobile, the last resort is using PC Windows on-screen keyboard, but it's not that convenient
i have it linked to the gsensor to rotate the screen, then just rotating my phone allows me to call up the keyboard.
Hey there everyone, I just got an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and I was wandering if there is some kind of list that tells the possible keyboard shortcuts available.
so far, I´ve found that cmd+f4 puts it to sleep or wakes it up, but I cannot "unlock" it. That is the main thing I want to find out how to do, but as much as I try, I cannot find the shortcut.
This might not be the same for you since I have a nook, not a tab, but...
For me the cmd key doesn't seem functional. Cmd-f4 and f4 both toggle the screen on/off and lock it (but not unlock)
The menu button seems to be mapped to to f1. Hitting escape seems to behave like the back button (gg vi from the terminal emulator).
The thing seems to very much map to the soft-keyboard. For example, alt-a makes a # (pound sign). Even more like the soft keyboard, you don't have to hold the alt. Push alt, release. Push a release, and you have #.
Also sometimes when I am just typing away it pops up randomly with a little window with options for random accented characters. I haven't found a pattern with that yet, but it is extremely annoying.
Hitting shift twice turns on caps lock, but the real caps lock doesn't work.
This line up with the Tab's behaviour? Anyone else find any useful shortcuts, or know a good reference? I'm betting a lot of these behaviours are shared between android devices and random bluetooth keyboards.