Dunkirk spirit lives on with Brit Bluetooth supplier

UNLIKELY AS IT might sound, a British supplier - Freedom Input - is attacking the US market from its base in the White Cliffs Business Park in Dover. Among the Bluetooth products it offers are a wireless keyboard and a wireless gamepad for smartphones and PDAs.

Fold-away keyboards for smartphones have been offered before, so what makes the Freedom keyboard unusual? The answer lies with its flexibility. It's possible to program as many as 127 keys to become 'smart function' keys with the Freedom unit.

Another benefit with the Freedom keyboard is the wide range of Bluetooth enabled devices that it can support. The list includes all the leading Symbian smartphones plus Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices, plus Palm PDAs too.

Finally there is the price which is a competitive £69.99 or $99. Freedom president Cameron Macsween told the INQ he's already been talking to British mobile operators about carrying the product.

Tucked away on the Freedom stand here @ CES was another Bluetooth offering, a Bluetooth gamepad which is designed to make playing games on smartphones much easier. The gamepad is naturally designed to have a PS2 look and feel. The product was so new it only had one driver for a Nokia smartphone.

So the INQ snapped the gamepad with its own Nokia cameraphone. There should be quite a demand for that product once it's finished.µ