Hasta La Gadget!

The Motorola Droid X has an amazing power that Motorola and Verizon Wireless aren’t promoting: it works with both Bluetooth keyboards and mice using the Bluetooth HID profile. In fact, I’m writing this right now on a Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000, in the Droid X’s email program.

I’ve tried a few Bluetooth keyboards, and results definitely vary. An Apple Bluetooth keyboard dropped its connection after a few sentences, but this Microsoft model is plugging along fine.

I’ve wondered for years why more smartphones don’t support add-on keyboards, because it turns them into much better productivity machines. With this portable yet roomy Bluetooth kit, I could easily write entire articles on the Droid X, much as I wrote my coverage of the 1999 South African elections on a Palm IIIx with a ThinkOutside keyboard.

The keyboard usage is very impressive, but the mouse is a bit more of a parlor trick. You can use a Bluetooth mouse to scroll through and select options on this phone, but the interface just wasn’t designed for mouse usage, and the whole thing feels like a gimmick.

The Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 also works fine with the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS running iOS 4, letting me type notes and e-mails. The mouse didn’t pair with the iPhones, though.