Use Your Android Phone as a Bluetooth Keyboard or Mouse Michael Kwan March 6, 2018 News When you’re sitting down in front of your computer and you plop your smartphone onto your desk, that phone really isn’t doing much of anything aside from waiting to distract you with notifications. With the upcoming unveiling and release of Android P, that could soon be changing, because your Android smartphone could be transformed into a Bluetooth keyboard or trackpad. One of the more notable features of the recently announced Samsung Galaxy S9 is that when you dock it into the DeX Pad, it can be used as a keyboard or mouse. You can still connect regular USB peripherals if you prefer, of course, but it’s great to have that option. But it’s still a physically connected option and it’s restricted to the desktop-ified interface of Samsung’s mobile experience. In digging through the Android P source code, XDA Developers user 500 Internal Server Error discovered a mention of enabling the Bluetooth Human Interface Device (HID) profile in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The existence of this Bluetooth HID code has since been confirmed. With that in place, smartphones (and tablets) running on Android P could presumably offer the ability to accept input that can then be sent over to your computer over Bluetooth, just like a regular Bluetooth keyboard or mouse. This could be an excellent solution for going through PowerPoint decks during sales presentations, for example, or as a media remote for your home theater PC. If the rumors on the Internet are true, it won’t be long before we’ll know about this feature for certain. Evan Blass says the first Android P developer preview is being targeting for a release in the middle of March, which could then conveniently coincide with Pi Day on March 14. Share This With The World!
