Comment by kamarg

7 years ago

Have you considered getting a bluetooth keyboard/mouse? It makes text editing on tablets/phones much more tolerable for me.

> Have you considered getting a bluetooth keyboard/mouse?

Not OP... a BT kb/mouse has been a great consumer-friendly boost on larger tablets for me but sadly... lots of applications (on Android) don't really take advantage of this. They are still very heavily optimized for touch-only.

Example: MX Player (my fav Android player) does a great job binding keyboard presses to actions (spaceBar: pause; arrowKeys: forward, back, etc..)

In contrast, VLC for mobile lacks this "polish". Mobile browsers are another example where actions could be optimized for mouse input but I haven't come across a browser yet that acknowledges mice as a separate input source.

fyi (for anyone interested in tablet to laptop conversion to lessen gorilla arm):

Zagg Folio for 10" tablets (basically turns a tablet into a laptop). I picked this up a couple of years ago (not too many available for Android, most are essentially flimsy stands). They also have similar for smaller handhelds:

https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Keyboard-Android-Tablets-10...

I have tried a bluetooth keyboard and at least for text editing it helps immensely. (Does a mouse do anything iOS?) In the end the iPad plus keyboard is clunky enough that i end up preferring a small laptop. Admittedly, I am not a typical user.

  • Not sure about iOS. On Android I've found a mouse is helpful about 50% of the time and still resort to just poking at the screen sometimes.

    Using a keyboard has been absolutely wonderful though. It's even saved me a few times when I didn't have my laptop with me and had to ssh into work servers for issues.