I got the SU-8W Nokia BT keyboard several months ago at the Evening with S60 event in Chicago, and have used it intermittently ever since. It works awesome with the phones, obviously, with the softkeys, menu button, and email shortcut key. But I also have a Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, and I think that’s a MUCH better device to be using a bluetooth keyboard with. The problem, though, was that I still had to touch the tablet way too much. It was very awkward to try to type on the keyboard, but then tap on the screen all the time, as well.

Someone mentioned keymapping to me, so I thought I’d delve a bit deeper and see if I could get some real use out of this thing. It turns out, you CAN custom-map certain keys and keystrokes so that the N800 can really use the SU-8W efficiently and effectively. Read on to see how you can do it for yourself.

The first step is to decide what buttons you want to do what. The best thing is to use the CTRL + (key) setup, but you can really do any combination that you want, almost. Assuming you have already paired your keyboard with the N800, here’s the steps to get the most functionality:

Go into Tools - Control Panel - Hardware Keyboard, and select the “Shortcuts” tab. You’ll see a list of functions (Close, Minimize, etc) and on the right is the keyboard shortcut. To change these, click “Edit”. Now the N800 is waiting for you to press the keypress combination that you want to do that function. I have Ctrl + Delete set to close whatever window/application I have open.

There is a whole list of things you can change. Just open each function up and hit the keypress combination that you want and then hit “OK”. With these customised to my preference, I’m able to MUCH more efficiently use the Nokia SU-8W BT keyboard with my N800. I can open apps, close them, switch between them, all without touching the tablet.

Categories: How-Tos
Tags: