It may not be an issue for those who have installed Haykuro's
release of HTC's lovely Android keyboard (1st image below - see comments for instructions). But folks who enjoy further customization can download an app for their Cupcake phone called Better Keyboard from the Android Market for $1.99. The listing currently says the offer will only last as week, but doesn't say what the price will jump to when the sale is over.
Better Android is the brand that serves up Open Home and some customized versions of Cupcake-compatible widgets. With a few of their products, you can put together a coordinated theme that integrates with virtually every nook and cranny of your operating environment. Each of their programs deserves a separate review, and this one is about Better Keyboard. But take a moment to look around their
homepage for an idea of what else the company offers. Near the top you'll find screenshots of the four Better Keyboard themes currently available, as well as a sample meant to assist you creating your own.
The first image I'll start with is the HTC IME that Haykuro released - simply because I find it the most elegant and functional. It gives you direct access to the input settings, and a button to hide the keyboard.
Now for the Better Keyboard themes. These are a sample what you'll find independently available in the Market at the time of this writing, but some Open Home themes come with their own keyboard theme as well.
This last one really only works with a very simple wallpaper and no icons. You can see an example of it under ideal circumstances at the Better Android website. Here, I show how it can be a bit problematic for some users.
The settings for Better Keyboard can be found in Settings -> Locale & text -> Better Keyboard. Audio and haptic feedback, auto complete, gestures, and auto-capitalization are among the options.
While I definitely think this application deserves a thumbs up, nothing currently beats HTC's keyboard, in my opinion. However, Better Keyboard offers a much simpler installation for those who don't want to spend a lot of time learning about Android hacks.
John Walton - Cell phone editor
John Walton is a student and writer who spends most of his free time fingerpicking an acoustic guitar and authoring biographical snippets in the third-person. He lives with his wife and their cat,...
Predictive text doesn't work in the Dutch language settings. It only shows my personal "User dictionary". It doesn't even work in compact qwerty and T9. I allready did a reboot.
In English it all works fine.
How can I solve this problem?
I would like to know if better keyboard support the handwriting mode? That is the HTC Magic in asia comes with an extra interface for handwriting mode beside the 3 (alphabet, sign 1 & sign 2).
Of course the Bigger Keys help also. ; D
I couldn't see half of the paid apps everyone else could before I rooted my phone.
Changes:
Cupcake is required for betterkeyboard
You must search it as one word
The HTC IME is also available as an apk - adb is not required.
Follow this link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=515840
Ignore the instructions on the page because they're for rooted G1 users.
Download the update.zip file linked from there and extract the file called "HTC_IME.apk" from the zip folder. Install the APK on your phone (I did this by loading the apk file from Linda File Manager off the SD card) and then you can uncheck "Android keyboard" and check "Touch Input" in your phone settings to enable the HTC keyboard.
I did the following to install the HTC virual keyboard. Its installed perfectly and i can set all the options. However there is no way to unselect the Android keyboard. Even when i have touch input selected it still defaults to the android keyboard.
Any suggestions on what i can do so that the HTC keyboard actually becomes active?
Thanks
Once you have it loaded and selected under settings->locale and ... when you are in a SMS message you need to long press the text box and change the input there also to touch input.