A few days ago I emailed Pocketop to ask if they were developing a version of their IR keyboard for the P800.
This morning I received the encouraging response that it would be ready in about "a month or so". Clearly timescales slip for all IT projects (in my experience anyway) but this looks promising.
They'll certainly get my money if this turns out to be true.
Hope this is true. You know how easily "a month or so" can turn into year or worse :roll:
Shame they cant do a BT one
IR products are so past tense... Having to keep the object in the line of site of the transmitter is extremely demanding and cumbersome. It would be nice if some companies recognized that BT is the right step towards the right direction.
BT is better than IR but I would be pleased with any keyboard at all.
There clearly are BT keyboards around (even a rubber one you can roll up) but AFAIK there is no likelihood that any of these will work with the P800 in the near (or even distant) future.
As far as the line of sight problem goes, this is more of an issue with using the phone as a modem for example. There is no reason why the phone should be visible in that case, but if I can see the phone (and if I can't there's not much point in using a keyboard) then keeping the line of sight for IRDA isn't much of a problem.
I just hope they bring it out before I finish Doom 2 on my P800.
[quote="stormuk"]Shame they cant do a BT one[/quote]
A bluetooth keyboard would be good only if you don't intend to answer any calls using a bluetooth headset. The P800 can only connect to one bluetooth device at a time. I would be happiest with a chatboard like the one for the T68i.
Got my SE Chatpen kit finally.. I guess that elliminates my need for waiting for a Keyboard for now... I noticed that the pen does get interrupted with an incoming call... This thing is still fresh so I gotta do some more testing. 😃
I must admit that I didn't know what a chatpen was until a few minutes ago, although I'd heard of it. I've now had a look on the SE web site.
Am I right in thinking that this is like using the stylus only you get to write on real paper with a real pen? It looks interesting, but I can only write about half (if that) the speed I can type.
Have you tried controlling a game with it? Does it work?
Actually, it was not intended to be used as a stylus. The pen can work as a standalone. Initially these pens were designed to use a cell phones BT functionality to carry a msg through it's GPRS portal to a remote source. However, after the P800 was released they then had to figure out how to utilize it as a tool for it. As of it the P800 is not "officially" supported for the P800. It is still in testing mode, but the pen is fully functional for the T68i. I have a dev kit to test out its compatibility with other features of the P800 (ie browsing navigation, button mapping, etc..) All of those require patches and that's where I'm at the moment. I"m still testing out the software and getting minimal help from SE, but a lot from Anoto. I will post a thorough feedback once I've gotten a firm grip on limits and capabilities.
It does sound interesting and I shall look forward to hearing what you can do with it.