The keyboard also has fold-out cradle to hold your handheld in good

viewing position while you type.  Because it uses Bluetooth and

not a hardware connection, you can place the handheld in any orientation. 

You also don’t have to buy a keyboard or connector for each Pocket PC

model or manufacturer.  Unlike some fold-out keyboards, the Freedom

Keyboard doesn’t relegate the number keys to a second function of the

top row.  It has all five standard rows of keys as well as a large

number of special characters.  The software also supports 10 program

The Freedom Keyboard is actually OEMed by Chainpus

and branded by

Freedom Input for world-wide sales.  As a result, the documentation

and disks all refer to the Freedom Keyboard web site, but, if you want

to download the most current driver, you can do it from

the Chainpus web site.  The Chainpus site refers to the device

as the Smartphonemate BK600.  (Don’t confuse it with the PDAMate

SK-6688, which is an Infrared keyboard.)  You can also download

the driver directly to your mobile device by browsing to www.freekey.com.

    The installation program uses ActiveSync to install

the driver into main memory.  Installation also places a shortcut

in your PPC’s Start menu to start the driver.  You’ll be asked

whether you wish to do a soft-reset when the installation completes. 

The soft-reset is to make sure the driver is loaded.

    When you start the driver, you’ll get a configuration

The check boxes at the top of the Config tab allow you to Activate the

keyboard (begin to use it for input) and allow it to Reconnect after

you power down either the keyboard or your Pocket PC and turn them back

on.  The sliders below that adjust the repeat rate (when a key

is held down) and the repeat delay (from the time you hold it down until

it starts repeating).  At the bottom of the Config tab is a test

entry box that allows you to type on the keyboard and see the input. 

We’ll cover the Function tab in the Program Features section. 

The Freedom Keyboard folds into a 6 x 3.75 x 1 inch package that’s fairly

easy to put into a larger pocket.  When opened it forms an 11.5

x 3.75 x 1.2 inch (3/4 size) keyboard.  To protect the keys from

getting folded into the hinge, the left side of the keyboard slides

to the left for closing and to the right for use.  There is a small

slider at the bottom of the left side of the keyboard that is used to

The Freedom Keyboard runs on two AA size batteries.  According

to their web site, that gives the keyboard over 90 hours continuous

use time or 168 hours on standby.  There is a small switch on the

left side of the keyboard that switches the keyboard on and puts it

Concealed under the right side of the keyboard is a fold-out cradle. 

The cradle slides up and mostly out of the case, then pivots to connect

The cradle snaps into the left side of the keyboard and helps to stabilize

the two halves.  There’s also a keyboard lock, just below the cradle,

which further stabilizes the two halves.  Unfortunately, even with

both of these in place, the hinge still has a bit of "give." 

It makes typing with the keyboard on your lap a little difficult. 

The cradle is completed by a spring-loaded flip-up section that places

In addition to the standard typing functionality, the Freedom Keyboard

has a lot of special keyboard functions as well:  First, pressing

Fn+CapsLock turns on an embedded calculator pad for quick numeric and

The irregular slant of the calculator pad and the shift to the right

of the top row (the 8 key becomes the 7 key) takes a bit to get used

"alt gr" key acts as a secondary "shift" key, giving

the "Fn" key provides another set of special functions, including

Fn+Z launches Inbox/Messeging.  Fn+X launches Contacts.  Fn+C

launches Tasks and so on.  In addition Fn+Space will show/hide

the onscreen input method.  That’s a step in the right direction. 

One of the annoying things about Pocket PC OS is that there’s no built-in

way to keep the input method from popping up when you have an input

box.  You don’t need the onscreen input method when you’re using

a keyboard.  With this function you can at least put it back away

without leaving the keyboard.  Fn+a number key will launch one

of 10 user-programmable applications.  That’s what the Function

Each of the 10 slots allows you to select any program that’s installed

on your Pocket PC.  In addition, there’s an option to "Choose

Data File…" which allows you to set the shortcut to any data

file on your device.  The data files "association" will

call up the appropriate program to load it when you execute the short

One of the things that annoys me about how Microsoft implemented the

onscreen input methods in WM2003SE is that the blasted thing takes up

nearly half the screen in landscape orientation.  Landscape is

great for web browsing, but any advantage completely disappears when

the onscreen input method pops up.  With the Freedom Keyboard,

I could browse in landscape orientation while retaining my full VGA

While on the subject of landscape orientation, I should also point out

that the Bluetooth connection allows you to use your Pocket PC in any

orientation that suits you.  Hardware-connected keyboards only

allow standard portrait orientation.  Infrared keyboards allow

two or three of the four possible orientations, but you obviously can’t

    The keyboard driver has no built-in help. 

It does come with Adobe acrobat (PDF) formatted help files on the companion

CD-ROM as well as printed versions.  The Help files include

a compatibility list,

a Quick Installation Guide, and

a full User Manual (ZIP compressed).

    While we’re on the subject of the documentation,

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that it’s excellent.  The documentation

that comes with peripherals is often minimal and more often difficult

to read.  The gentleman who wrote the documentation for the Freedom

Keyboard is one of those rare individuals who understands the technology,

but also understands how to communicate.  With a product with the

added versatility of the Freedom Keyboard, good documentation is essential

to using it to its fullest and the Freedom Keyboard folks have provided

it.  I also like that there are separate User Guides for each type

of hardware you’d connect to the keyboard.  That way, I don’t have

to wade through Smartphone-specific instructions to find the PPC-related

ones or figure my way through instructions that are general enough to

take in all the various connectable devices.

    In case that still isn’t enough, Freedom Keyboard

also comes with Talk Me Through It (tmti) telephone technical

    The companion disk that comes with the Freedom

Keyboard has drivers to support Nokia, Sendo, Siemans, and Sony Symbian

Smart Phones, O2 and Dopod SmartPhone (2003), HP iPAQ, Acer, iMate,

O2, and Dopod Pocket PCs, and Palm Zire and Tungsten models.  Consult

the

Freedom Keyboard web site for a full compatibility list.

    The keyboard software requires the WidComm Bluetooth stack. 

If your Pocket PC doesn’t use the WidComm stack you’ll need to contact

    I had some difficulty getting the keyboard

to connect to my HP iPAQ hx4700.  I was able to get it to connect

easily with my HP iPAQ h2215, however so it appeared to be an issue

with the 4700 or with Windows Mobile 2003, Second Edition.  After

reading through the manual, however, I discovered that the recommended

procedure when this happens is to use the Bluetooth Manager and "bond"

with the keyboard.  After doing that, I had no trouble at all. 

I highly recommend that people read the manual, myself included.

    Other than the connection problem (solved by consulting

the manual), I had no problems with the keyboard at all.  I do

have a few wishes, though:  It might be hard to conceive of adding

yet another set of enhanced functions to the keyboard software, but

I thought of one such:  In addition to being able to launch programs,

I’d also like to see a "macro" capability.  What this

would do would be to allow you to key Fn+A to have "Herron-Morton

Place Association" appear within the document that I’m typing.

    The second wish is that the manufacturer could find

some way to make the hinge absolutely immobile when locked.  It’s

fairly good right now, but it still has a little "give" that

makes typing on your knees a bit difficult.

    The third wish is that the software would include

a special "do nothing" on-screen input method.  When

the input method is triggered, it "does nothing", eliminating

the annoying input method pop-up when you enter an input box. 

It would be even better if, when the keyboard was enabled, it would

also switch to this "do-nothing" input method.

    The final wish is actually general to all PDA Bluetooth

keyboards.  The concept behind Bluetooth was that devices wouldn’t

require additional drivers as long as they support the correct profiles. 

However, instead of supporting the Human Interface Device (HID) profile

as do their desktop counterparts, PDA keyboards universally support

only the Serial Port profile.  For devices that support the HID

profile already, that means an additional, and unnecessary driver needs

to be installed.  Due to Microsoft’s decision to limit driver memory,

this can cause problems.

    I’m sure that there are reasons for using the Serial

Port profile and the additional driver.  One would be that most

PDA keyboard manufacturers already make hardware serial port and Infrared

connected keyboards.  A hardware serial port, Infrared, and the

Bluetooth Serial Port profile can all use essentially the same programming. 

Another reason is that some handhelds don’t support the HID profile. 

I’d still like to see the HID profile supported as well, allowing devices