Filed under: Hardware, Hacks, iPhone
Apple Bluetooth keyboard paired with iPhone
There's a very cool video at Ralf Ackermann's blog showing an iPhone receiving input from an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Of course, it requires a jailbroken phone, but Ralf claims that it works in all iPhone apps that make use of the keyboard.
This reminds me of the Stowaway Keyboard I used with my old Palm IIIe. I didn't mind Graffiti as much as some others did, but attaching that keyboard to my Palm increased its usefulness many times over.
Of course, I'd love to use a wireless keyboard with my iPhone. Since I won't be jailbreaking, here's hoping Apple (or someone else) will make this available to scaredy cats like me.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
David said 8:06AM on 2-23-2009
Looks promising!
You gotta love the fact that the guy in the video is typing with one finger to prove how fast text input can become with this method though :-D
(before any comments come: I know it's probably for better visibility and because the camera is partially in the way, but still ...)
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Jesse said 8:14AM on 2-23-2009
Its kinda weird, the video never really showed the screen while text was being entered. It was entered and then zoomed in, hmmm. I'm not saying its not really happening, it just would have been nice to see text actually showing up on the screen while it was being entered.
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jigme said 8:17AM on 2-23-2009
nice. a friend of mine uses his N95 with a fold-up BT keyboard for taking lecture notes - i'd love to be able to do this with my iPhone, so i'll be installing this as soon as i can.
btw - and i'm not being facetious, i mean this in all seriousness - you say "scaredycats like me", but what reasons does anyone have NOT to jailbreak? i don't see what's to be scared of, and if you don't use cracked apps, as i don't, then there's no moral issue either. so what's stopping you?
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Sabon said 11:24AM on 2-23-2009
The reason NOT to jail break an iPhone is that things don't go that smoothly when updating them. Updates from Apple break the jail breaked iPhone and then you can't get updates until they break the new update.
THIS is called a BIG hassle and I absolutely, completely, understand why the person that wrote this article says they are a scardycat when you expect something to work and every time there is an update and causes your iPhone to stop working.
Most of us buy Apple products because "they just work". It stops "just working" when you jail break them. It no longer is the same product for us.
jigme said 12:10PM on 2-23-2009
i completey agree that for many, there's no need to jailbreak and that the 'phone should "just work" fine, if Apple and the App Store has all your needs covered - and i'm in no way knocking you for making that choice. all i'm saying is that, considering the process of "re-virginizing" your jailbroken iPhone is (generally) very straightforward if you ever need to, there's really nothing to be scared about should you want to poke around a bit under the hood, or to take advantage of all the amazing work others ave done in the form of their jailbroken apps to get so much more out of your device and enjoy its full potential.
im not knocking anyone's choice - i'm just saying there's really nothing to be scared of (bar some kind of bad-luck, Act-of-God scenario) if you do choose to jailbreak.
robogobo said 6:59PM on 2-23-2009
@Sabon
All you have to do is wait a couple days until a gazillion blogs report the next Pwnage tool is available, and then update via Pwnage and iTunes. Now that I cleared that up, there's NO good reason not to jailbreak.
Ondra Soukup said 8:18AM on 2-23-2009
It's VNC, the keyboard is paired to a computer and the computer is connected via WiFi to VNC server on the iPhone.
There's not even a Bluetooth icon on the iPhone, guess why ?
Nice try, but fail..
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Jash Sayani said 9:06AM on 2-23-2009
I thought the same in the beginning. But when I tried it, it did not work. Its because even if you use VNC, you have to use the iPhone's virtual on-screen keyboard. The computer keyboard does not work.
Ondra Soukup said 9:30AM on 2-23-2009
well, then you're doing something wrong...
1:40 in this vid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mGILmLLTEI
lobo said 3:43PM on 2-23-2009
b*llocks! it's real!
how come that you don't realize that :
- vnc is used to send keyboard events to the iphone (in fact, if you try to use your iphone with vnc, the on screen keyb doesn't appear when you type)
- BT icon isn't available because that guy is using another BT stack, so no UI elements could be enabled ... so no icon ! it's so OBVIOUS that it's not apple BT stack ..
- TUAW will have marked that as fake after few minutes ...
Ondra Soukup said 8:05PM on 2-23-2009
There's no way to end this by talking it over and over, so here's a video demo!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTgrgEdi-lw
Happy now ? Or I should go, mount the cam on tripod far far away, and replicate the original video ?
Ondra Soukup said 8:40PM on 2-23-2009
There was no other way to settle this - so here you go, a proof :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTgrgEdi-lw
the keyboard is there all the time :)
Eric said 8:34AM on 2-23-2009
looks like a fake to me. there's no proof of actual BT pairing on that video plus it could be easily done with Veency (VNC) and a bluetooth keyboard.
it was supposed that BT was being investigated and bluesn0w project started ages ago now but no further progress was made since then.
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Constantinos said 8:35AM on 2-23-2009
FAKE.. indeed. As Ondra already said, the phone has no BT connection activated. What it does have, is a VNC connection and wifi... And I was so excited :(
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Marchandlogin said 8:50AM on 2-23-2009
I envision (2) iPhones-iPods etc. (1) with a full keyboard, and (1) full screen "page, email, etc. wirelessly conected for this sort of thing. For those who rock a iPhone and a touch. d{~_~}b
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Steve said 9:07AM on 2-23-2009
PING: [....]
http://theifoneblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/iphone-hacked-to-use-apple-wireless.html
[....]
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Thom Brooks said 9:09AM on 2-23-2009
I miss my Stowaway keyboard. I really with Apple would loosen up and permit this sort of coolness. How could it hurt?
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Oliver said 10:22AM on 2-23-2009
Notice when he goes to type in the second phrase he hits Q but no Q appears on the iphone screen.
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zyzzyva said 3:49PM on 2-23-2009
Uh, no he doesn't.
Alexiell said 10:19AM on 2-23-2009
THIS would convince me to get an iPhone, I love my Touch to death BUT I enjoy solid state key boards far more and have had too much trouble trying to 'type' on my Touch
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