for as long as I've had my phone, which, of course, is as long as I've had it rooted, my messaging app has acted extremely odd.
Using the arrow keys and the back-space key causes strange, and often app-breaking, behavior. it seems to be registering the key presses in at least 2 other areas of the app. it always scrolls to the top of the conversation, it highlights conversations in the main message window, and it highlights options in the menus before I even have them open. it seems that the window that lists the conversations, as well as the options menu, are still listening to key presses, even when I'm writing a text. often, the arrow keys and the back-space key stop working all together until I back out of the text-input and re-open the keyboard. this happens litterally every time i write a text message, which is a lot.
all I want the arrow keys to do when I'm in a text field is move the cursor, not jump the highlight to the send button, not scroll through auto-complete options, not jump to the conversation window and scroll through individual texts, and certainly not control the selection of items in windows and menus that I don't even have open.
Also, when pressing 2 keys in quick succession, it often only registers one, TH, especially. I'd say its just registering the second press as a movement of the first contact point, istead of a second touch, like old laptop track-pads, but this device is more than capable of registering multi-touch. also, if you hold one key, and press another, the letter from the first appears on the second key for a brief second...
I'm using virtuous ville v.1.4.0 stock, but I've installed and uninstalled a couple other keyboard apps, can I re-install the stock ICS keyboard? is it a sense keyboard? is this happening to anyone else with this rom or with the 4.0.3 os?
thanks for your help
-Peter
god I miss my G1... stupid friggin slabs. this was the first, and will be the last phone that I ever buy without a real keyboard. this touch-screen only nonsense is ridiculous. it would be fast if it were possible to be accurate and keys weren't literally touching each other. why can't I tell it how much space I want between the keys, so I press nothing, instead of the wrong key? there would be no haptic feedback so I knew to press it again, and I wouldn't constantly be pressing the shift, space, and num keys, which the auto-correct doesn't account for in the slightest, instead of the A key or any of the bottom row of letters .I'm tired of sacrificing so much functionality just so phones can look slicker and break easier.
Don't know why it fails, sorry.... The stock ICS keyboard is not a sense keyboard, there is one on market looks like this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/....android.inputmethod.latin.ice_cream_sandwich
Or you could grab a keyboard from any CM9 or AOKP rom zip file, it's named Latin-IME.apk iirc. The jellybean keyboard is similar but nicer somehow, possible it works on ICS. Also SwiftKey is really good.
Thanks for the suggestions! I do, in fact, have a sense keyboard and I do need arrow keys, which the non-sense keyboards, including the jellybean apk don't seem to have. I still can't fathom why anyone would ever prefer these to a real keyboard and a d-pad... also, the jellybean keyboard still has the same trouble with TH's. has anyone here, who shares my frustration with soft keyboards, found a decent keyboard app?
I wish there were decent quality, mini keyboards, too. Wireless or micro-usb would both work, as I'd probably make a case to hold it with my phone. I've only seen a couple, and they're either too big to be practical, or poor quality.
I apologize for my negative attitude. this is just frustrating, as texting is my main form of communication, and I post to forums from my phone quite often, so typing is important to me.
thanks again
-Peter
This is what SwiftKey 3 looks like if you activate the arrows and the Holo theme... One month trial.
Related
Could someone who has one tell me how well the keyboard works. I have a G900 and when I open a new note in portrait then slide out the keyboard to landscape it takes a good 5 seconds before I can type. Is the Raphael quicker? Also how fast can you type? If I go too fast on my G900 even though I can feel the keys clicking only half the letters I hit appear on the screen.
The other feature I'm interested in is the video out. Anyone tried this yet? Or better still captured it so we can see how it looks?
Thanks
Not tried Video-Out yet, but the keyboard is good if unspectacular.
Personally I'm finding that I'd much rather have an "OK" button on the keyboard than a second "Shift" button. The lack of hardware "Softkey" buttons is a non-issue, especially as they were practically unusable on the Kaiser.
Speed of typing is the same as it ever was on the Hermes or Kaiser. Possibly quicker with the addition of dedicated number buttons, but I'm not quite up to speed yet (keep hitting "Right Shift" instead of "Enter"
Only other nitpick is that I liked having the keyboard slide out of the right hand side. That way, the cursor/enter keys and 5-way D-Pad are on opposite sides of the phone when it's in landscape - which makes one-handed navigation easier if you want to be able to use either hand...
I've disabled all of the auto-correct and suggestion SIP options on the TP and that works great, HOWEVER (heh, heh)...
Is there any way to turn off that annoying "what-you're-typing-preview" that always appears on-screen as you type? It is such a waste of screen real estate.
Do you know what I mean? I'll explain...
For example:
Code:
PREVIEW STYLE 1
1. Start a new text message.
2. Pop out your physical keyboard
3. Start typing!
You will see what you type appear in a little "preview window" at the bottom of your screen.
Now here's the REALLY annoying one...
Code:
PREVIEW STYLE 2
1. Open an existing SMS message (threaded view)
2. Pop out your physical keyboard
3. Start typing...
You will see the preview appear *above* your text this time. Even MORE annoying since it's taking up real estate in the typing area this time around.
I've been scrounging for a solution to this and really hope one exists.
Thanks for everything, guys!
press ctrl + space and choose abc
Thank-you VERY MUCH, Brendo!
I thought that I had already done this but I realize now that it was probably in my dreams.
(YES -- I dream about my TP -- don't lie -- YOU DO, TOO!!!).
Lol.
Take care.
Hi Guys, probably very silly of me, but 'choose abc'. Do we have a 'abc' button? I can't seem to find out what you mean with this. Also pressing cntrl + space and typing abc does nothing (obviously). Help me. I also find the typing preview window quite annoying, especially since I have been so happy to be able to turn the auto correct options off.
It can be found on the SIP - pop up keyboard, providing you have "full keyboard", phone keyboard etc selected and not the windows default keyboard. You will see a button marked ABC->T9. Make sure T9 is not selected.
Gee thnx ardsar, this was clear and worked. Indeed I had to change the layout of my pop up keyboard, as I hardly ever use it and had it in the default keyboard mode.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU (yes, I'm shouting )
If there was anything that pissed me off on this phone, it was the goddamn useless preview!
Why do they expect that you're a retard, if you bought HTC phone? I thought these phones were for smart people
That's kool that it will take the dialog away but while I'm in programs it still types the letters in the background and causes them to skip. Is there any way to disable the typing of keys in the background while still reading the keystrokes. Let's say I'm using PocketNES while I'm in the game it reads the hardware keyboard as typing letters when I'm not trying to type any message. I would just like to use the letters as buttons instead. Hopefully someone has found a solution to the problem!
I used to touch type on old candy bar and slide phones without having to look at the screen, by feeling the dialpad keys I knew what button I was on and using the T9 dictionary it was easy, I really miss this in new phones now.
I wanted to buy a dialpad phone with Android as a 2nd phone but there are none being made so I think they are going the way of the dodo.
There is no feesable way to touch type on new phones, qwerty keyboards have too many keys, haptic feedback is in its infancy, so I propose a full screen T9 keyboard for touch typing.
The whole display would be filled with 9 or 10 buttons representing 0-9 like a standard dialpad.
This wouldn't be the main input method, I think it would be good for it to activate by pressing the volume down button twice while in a text field and deactivate by doing the same thing. Hopefully it should be possible to touch type without haptic feedback when the whole screen is filled with only 9 buttons.
Let me know what you guys think.
why the full screen??? my htc hero has softkb with t9, fills half the screen. I never use qwerty. Works like a charm. you can get the htc_ime.apk and use that.
I havent heard of anyone being able to touch type on a touchscreen phone yet, ie writing an sms while driving without looking at their phone.
If it is literally filling the whole screen it may be possible on a 3.7" screen the buttons will be big, you are either pressing one of the corners, middle or sides.
If it is filling only half the screen it becomes a lot more difficult if not impossible.
Ok. So I'm a longtime iPhone user. Ordered a Nexus One before they disappear for software development reasons and just sheer curiosity on my part.
I absolutely loathe the default software keyboard on the Nexus One. What a pile of trash in comparison to the iPhone keyboard.
I've done a bit of research on software keyboard replacements. Seems other people feel the same way I do about the default keyboard.
So I snagged ThickButtons from the Market... it's "ok" but not a huge upgrade. The button placement is odd. For example. If you click the 123 button to get the number/special symbols keyboard in the bottom left. Once you click that the ABC button is not in the same location, it's moved one button to the right. Meaning I can't just tap, tap, tap and be done. it's more like tap, tap, move, tap.
So my question to you guys/gals is what keyboard do you use and why? If any other iPhone users out there can comment as well if you found anything remotely similar to the iPhone keyboard. At this point I'm switching back and forth between iPhone and Nexus One every other day or so. And by far, the keyboard is the worst part of the Android experience.
thanks
I used the iphone for a bit and personally I am very happy with the Android default. I can't really find any major difference between them? Although I do not use predictive text, I can type pretty quickly.
What exactly do you find better about the iphone keyboard? Maybe you are just used to it. *shrugs*
berardi said:
I used the iphone for a bit and personally I am very happy with the Android default. I can't really find any major difference between them? Although I do not use predictive text, I can type pretty quickly.
What exactly do you find better about the iphone keyboard? Maybe you are just used to it. *shrugs*
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Click to collapse
No doubt a lot of the problem is in fact the result of being used to it.
The problem I have is that the iPhone tends to try to predict which word you are typing and as it does so increases the size of the touch area for letters that are most likely to be next. The size of the buttons does not change on screen, just the area that causes them to be touched. So if you type "S" it will make the touch area surrounding likely next letters such as "o" and "t" larger while making the area surrounding letters least likely to be touched next "x" "z" "m" etc smaller.
Thick Buttons does something similar, but it actually changes the size of the buttons themselves. So the layout of the keyboard fluctuates as you type which is both distracting and harder to adjust to since you might be eyeing where the next key is but it'll move on you after the previous button was pressed.
The default keyboard is just hard to type on. It's also very sensitive to multiple touches... which I hear is just a symptom of the keyboard not supporting multi-touch...
Also the layout of the iPhone keyboard just makes sense. I haven't tried Better Keyboard (for cost reasons I'm trying to avoid it), nor have I tried Swype (though I'd like to)...
Just really hoping there's something better out there. After using an iPhone for so long this is really just the most difficult thing to type on. Makes me feel like the whole hardware keyboard thing is sort of a requirement with Android and that's why people are so unwilling to try the iPhone due to only having a software keyboard.
I think the single largest problem I have is that tapping the space button is impossible on both Thick Buttons and the default. I typically have to tap twice and the second one is a tap with authority as it's getting really frustrating having to do it over and over after each word. If I try to type fast i end up with multiple words without spaces between them scattered through out. Very stupid.
UnLogikal said:
The problem I have is that the iPhone tends to try to predict which word you are typing and as it does so increases the size of the touch area for letters that are most likely to be next. The size of the buttons does not change on screen, just the area that causes them to be touched. So if you type "S" it will make the touch area surrounding likely next letters such as "o" and "t" larger while making the area surrounding letters least likely to be touched next "x" "z" "m" etc smaller.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Default Android keyboard also has word prediction. Just write "oresicyion" - you will get "prediction". It's not the same, as you described, but effects are exactly the same. You don't have to click letters precisely, because they have larger area than they looks alike.
EDIT:
But I didn't use iPhone a lot, just "clicked it" few times, so maybe I just don't know, what is so better in this iPhone approach
Bought Better Keyboard. Much better. I'd recommend it to anyone really.
swype is the best keyboard. But to use it properly, read the tutorial first. after that no one can out wps you using 1 finger ;D
So this may seem like kind of an oddball question, as every search I did turned up nothing but requests FOR this button (though it apparently replaced an old smiley button, which seems even more useless), but I was wondering if any modders out there had made a version of swype that had no voice input button. Ideally the real estate would be reclaimed for the space bar and/or enter keys, both of which are positively tiny in portrait mode. As a secondary consideration, it'd be nice to remove the Swype help/options button on the bottom-left, too, and an option for arrow keys (sometimes I like having them and sometimes I don't, but the option would be nice).
Just curious if anyone else cares/has worked on something like this. Thanks in advance!