Windows Phone Thoughts: Bluetooth Keyboard Shootout & Preview of WM5 HID Keyboard Profile Support

"For those of us that rely on our phones for email while out and about, we know how tedious replying to email can be when using a numeric keypad and a predictive text system like T9 or iTap... The new portable, folding Bluetooth keyboards on the market try to offer some of that ease of use while not weighing us down. At least not too much. In this comparison review we pit the venerable ThinkOutside Stowaway line's Bluetooth keyboard against two relative newcomers: Nokia's SU-8W and Freedom Input's new Freedom Keyboard."

There are a couple of articles worthy of your attention if you're interested in Bluetooth keyboards. First, there's MobileBurn's Bluetooth keyboard shootout between the ThinkOutside's BT Stowaway, Nokia SU-8W, and the Freedom Keyboard. If you follow my thoughts on the matter, any BT keyboard without a numbers row is a deal-breaker for me, so note that 2 of the 3 being reviewed don't have a dedicated numbers row. Additionally, The::Unwired have put together a nice preview of the Windows Mobile 5.0 support for the Bluetooth HID Keyboard Profile. What does this mean? Well, assuming you have a BT keyboard supporting the HID profile, you should be able to connect it with a WM5 device natively without driver and/or software installations.