I bought this rather nice Bluetooth keyboard for use with my Motorola Xyboard (Xoom 2) tablet.

BT_keyboard_IMG_6561

It was about $18, shipped, on eBay. It’s small, designed for Android (it has Android-specific keys instead of iPad keys), and runs on two AAA batteries, so I don’t have to worry about keeping it charged. (It uses about 2 mA – I measured – so should be good for about 500 hours of run time on a fresh set of alkaline AAAs.)

Unfortunately, I had trouble pairing it. I don’t think it’s the keyboard’s fault, since it paired perfectly with my Nexus 4.

After much fiddling, I got it to pair – here’s the trick:

  1. Before pairing, make sure the tablet does not already know about the keyboard. (That will happen if you had a previous unsuccessful attempt at pairing.) To clear the keyboard from the tablet, do a “scan for devices” on the tablet, with the keyboard powered off.
  2. In Settings>Input, select “SwiftKey Tablet X”.
  3. Then pair.

Then it works. At least it did for me, on Motorola’s stock Android 4.0.4 build for the Xyboard 8.2 (Xoom 2 ME).  I’d guess this might apply to other Motorola tablets, too.

I think this is Motorola’s fault, but given that this is an “orphan” tablet at this point, I don’t think they’re going to fix it.