This is a followup to my posting concerning the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition Bluetooth keyboard problem.
I am very happy to report that my tablet now works 100% of the time with all five of my bluetooth keyboards! Note, I only have 5 different branded keyboards because I was hoping beyond hope that at least ONE of them would work.
The solution was accidental. When I recently allowed my Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition to update its Android version to 5.1.1, the problem went away....completely!
Nowhere that I have found has this "fix" been announced, and I'm surprised that I'm the first to mention it on this forum. I had recently (1 week ago) contacted Samsung support via online chat on their support website and asked for a quote to send back my out-of-warranty tablet for a repair of the problem. I didn't get the quote 'til a few days afterward (more on that, later). The rep was trying to be as helpful as possible, and after our initial greetings, I informed him that before he has me "try" anything, I wanted to point out that this is most definitely NOT a compatibility problem as Samsung as told us in the past. It may well have been with some folks, but not this time and I explained why it was not. He then asked me if I was "prepared to do a hard reset" of my tablet. At this point, feeling like I'm talking to PC support asking me to "reformat my harddrive", I told him that if he would give me a quick summary of what he want's to do AFTER the reset, I can tell him if I'm prepared or not, based on whether or not I've already tried whatever he's about to suggest. He indicated that he understands my concern, so he asked me to do a cold restart of my tablet using the 2-button restart. I did so, and just before I told him to proceed, I recalled that my tablet recently updated to OS 5.1.1. So I pulled out one of my bluetooth keyboards (in this case, a Logitech K480 bluetooth keyboard). I paired it with the tablet, then ..... voila, but completely unexpected, the tablet worked flawlessly, and I proceeded to type my response to his questions using the bluetooth keyboard. I informed him that all is well and this appears to have been fixed with the upgrade to 5.1.1.
After we traded "thank you" and have a great holiday, we ended chat.
What's funny (or frustrating, depending upon how you look at it) is that a few days later, I received an email concerning my "case" along with the case number assigned during the previous chat session. The email informed me of 2 things which are/were simply not true.
They are:
1) The problem is one of "compatibility" between my tablet and my keyboard.
2) They have received "no reports" of this problem.
The first one is the assumption made by most reps at first. In my case, it was never true but I'll chalk that up to the rep following a troubleshooting flowchart.
The second one has to be a lie. I responded to this with links to the thread in various forums, including this one, that shows the magnitude of the customer base with this problem.
I don't expect a response at this point, so I'm considering the case resolved.
Postscript: I've tried my other keyboards, 3 of which are chinese or korean "knock-offs" I purchased from Amazon. All of them work ... flawlessly!
I hope that those of you who had this issue and still have their 10.1-2014s can gain the same results. If you have not already done so, please update your tablet with the Android 5.1.1 upgrade from Samsung.
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