Bluetooth Keyboards

Stowaway Shasta, or iGo Keyboards

iGo (formerly ThinkOutside) makes the Stowaway Shasta Bluetooth Keyboard that integrates well with Blackberries. Models circa 2005 had serious battery life issues however, because of significant current draw while folded (on standby).

Freedom Input Keyboards

There are two issues that come up on the BlackBerry. The first is “keystroke injection” being set to Deny. Keystroke injection is the method that the keyboard uses to talk to the BlackBerry and input text. On the newer BlackBerry’s however this option is set to “Deny” by default for all applications.

All you need to do to fix this is just change the permissions for the keyboard to set it to “Allow”. There are instructions on our website on how to do this which you can get from: Keystroke Injection Settings “Trackball” – Powered By Kayako SupportSuite

The second issue (which also effects the newer BlackBerry’s more then the older ones) is that there is a bug within the 4.2.1 and upwards operating systems which effects the bluetooth. You pair a keyboard and it seems to pair ok but the BlackBerry doesn’t actually install the right services for it.

When this happens everything seems to work ok until you click the Activate keyboard then it just sits at connecting forever and never goes anywhere.

The way to fix this is to: Go to options (or settings depending on theme) Go to Bluetooth Select the keyboard from the list of paired devices. Press the menu button and select “device properties” At the bottom you should see “services:” and if you are having this problem probably nothing under here. Press the menu button again and select “refresh service list”. After a few seconds you should see SPP Slave appear and the keyboard would then connect ok.

This bug can effect different bluetooth devices in different ways and I put a post up about it which is linked below:http://www.blackberryforums.com/blue…r-4-2-0-a.html

It doesn’t happen every time though or on every device so removing the pairing and re-pairing it will fix the problem most of the time also. We have one curve here that has never had any problems and another curve (same carrier, OS, software) that will mess up on about every 5th bluetooth connection.

• Thanks to Paul Bowles @ BlackBerryForums.com for providing the information on the Freedom Input keyboards