So, I had a bit of a disaster over summer (Australian summer...), when my laptop keeled over and died in a pretty final sort of way... a pity, seeing as I did love that XMG Fusion so much... but for whatever reason, it was done and unable to be resurrected at all. But the most annoying thing was the complete inability to do any meaningful administration or other work (including writing blog posts...) as I was down to a regular phone... and that had exposed how lacking the mobile experience was for anything other than short snippet work... and I was pretty determined not to ever get caught in such a conundrum again, and so I started exploring ways for me to use my large format e-reader and phone in a more productive way.

... and I think that I have finally found the missing piece to that puzzle! Introducing, a small (well, tiny...) folding bluetooth keyboard from iClever!

Opening it all up, you have a nice little carry case, along with a charging cable and holder.... plus a cute little carry bag (that unfortunately is only for the keyboard and can't fit the holder at the same time. One additional extra bonus is the USB C connector... I'm hoping to be fully off the USB micro connectors in the coming year, which will allow me to travel with less cables and adaptors!

... here is the little keyboard! Folded up, it is about the size of a hand! Not including the finger parts... just a touch larger than palm size!

The holder is a nice touch, but not really neccessary... you can always just prop your phone up on book or something like that... and I'm likely to dump this part of the kit in the near future. Interestingly enough, it took me a while to realise that this was for holding the phone... and not to prop up the keyboard at a different angle! Ooops...

.... and it unfolds out into a full keyboard layout, with a touch pad for mouse work as well! Three bluetooth connections, and shortcuts to allow interaction with phone/tablet settings (such as brightness and volume). The actual keyboard size is pretty tight, sort of what you would expect from a netbook sized (~10 inch) laptop. For me that is no problem, I have thin spindly fingers, but if you have bigger fingers, this might not work quite as well!

The touch pad is decently responsive, and behaves very much like a regular laptop touchpad with tap to click.

I managed to write this whole post with the keyboard as a little experiment whilst waiting backstage for a performance to begin... and it did elicit more than a few interested comments!

In the end, I think that I'm likely to pair this with the large format ereader, as using it with the phone tends to wipe out the phone battery (due to the screen on time...) which is not the best idea for the main communication device...

... and despite the fact that I picked this up as an emergency option, I think it is also quite likely that the e-reader/keyboard combo will be a good replacement for taking out the full laptop for short in town trips.. such as going in to teach at the university... it is much lighter than the laptop! Plus, there is more than a touch of nerd street cred in such a dorky setup!

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

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