BoxwaveKeyboardBuddy
Latest
Boxwave Keyboard Buddy case: When a virtual keyboard isn't enough
Although I'm personally very comfortable with typing on the iPhone's virtual keyboard - especially on the iPhone 6 Plus - there are some people who just loved the old pre-iPhone "smartphones" with the little slideout keyboards. If you count yourself among that crowd and want a "real" keyboard for your iPhone 6, then you'll be happy to hear about the Boxwave Keyboard Buddy Case (US$89.95, on special for $79.95). For the rest of you, I recommend staying away from this expensive gimmick. Specifications Dimensions: 5.5 x 2.2 x .68 inches (13.97 x 5.59 x 1.73 cm) Weight: 3.2 ounces (90.7 grams) Includes built-in backlight, micro-USB charge cable Design The Keyboard Buddy Case consists of a rather plain black case with a slideout Bluetooth keyboard. That keyboard is really designed for thumb typing in landscape orientation, and I frankly found the case for the iPhone 6 to be just too wide for my thumbs to reach the center (g,h,t,y,b,n) keys and almost too wide to reach the space bar. The case is wider than the keyboard - there's about a half-inch of space on either side. On the right side of the keyboard, that space is taken up with three LEDs; a blue one to signify Bluetooth, a green one to signify that the battery is charged and that the device is powered up, and one that glows red during charging. Fan of diminutive keyboards who use their iPhones in the dark a lot (you'd better not be texting in movie theaters, just sayin'), you'll be thrilled to know that there's a backlight built in. The keyboard has a strange blockish shape, and includes fn, shift, alt, and command keys, as well as a home key and a set of arrow keys. The fn key serves to bring up all sorts of special features in addition to the number keys. Functionality The Keyboard Buddy Case is easy to set up - place the iPhone 6 in the case, press the Home and Fn buttons simultaneously to put the keyboard into pairing mode, then type a 4-digit pairing code into the keyboard when prompted by the iPhone. The battery life for the keyboard is listed as two weeks, but that may not take into account using the backlight. I found this keyboard to be just about unusable, but your mileage may vary depending on how you hold slide-out keyboards and whether you find pushing tiny little keys with almost no play to be your preferred method of typing on a smartphone. I don't. Conclusion The Boxwave Keyboard Buddy Case for iPhone 6 will probably be popular with those who just can't give up their BlackBerry or Sidekick. For use with an iPhone 6, I recommend the very usable iWerkz Universal Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard or the recently-reviewed Logitech Keys-To-Go keyboard. Either one has much longer battery life and if you actually want to type quickly and accurately, you'll spend the money to get a real portable Bluetooth keyboard. Finally, the price on this is ridiculously high - especially when you consider that the top-rated Logitech Keys-To-Go is actually $20 less expensive and the iWerkz sells for $35 or less! Rating: 1 star out of 4 stars possible.
BoxWave Keyboard Buddy iPhone case review
Ever since Apple added Bluetooth keyboard support to iOS, manufacturers have been working to deliver products that add a hard keyboard to the iPhone with at least a little bit of style. We've checked out a number of these before -- namely the Nuu Minikey and the TK-421 -- but we've yet to find anything that actually makes it worth the extra bulk (not to mention battery consumption). BoxWave's Keyboard Buddy is yet another sliding keyboard case built for the iPhone, but is it better than the rest? Read on past the break to find out. %Gallery-112731%
BoxWave's Keyboard Buddy turns your iPhone 4 into the Droid it always wanted to be
Suffering from a little bit of Droid envy? It happens to even the most loyal of iPhone users, and now BoxWave is stepping in to make your life almost complete (we say "almost" because there's still no native Gmail client for the iPhone, and all your tears aren't going to solve that). The BoxWave Keyboard Buddy Case is just what it sounds like, a Bluetooth keyboard embedded in an iPhone 4 case, only instead of flipping out like the TK-421 or slide-tilting like the ultra-bulky Nuu Mini Key, BoxWave's solution is a simple sliding affair that adds very little to the iPhone 4's profile and hardly anything to its footprint. Also, it's your buddy. It'll start shipping next month, and it's a little spendy at $70, but can you really put a price on the flattery of imitation?
