Virtual touchscreen keyboard coming to Android OS
By Will Park on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 2:44 PM PST In Android, Announcements, Developer, GPhone, T-Mobile
Android OS to support touchscreen keyboard
The Android OS is now official and ready to bring Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s mobile platform to the world. The T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1, with Android OS in tow, has barely left the starting gates and we’re already seeing complaints roll in. As the first-run edition of a new mobile OS, Android was bound to need a little refinement.
Aside from the T-Mobile G1’s battery-hungry nature, users are reportedly miffed at Android’s lack of a virtual, on-screen keyboard. While the G1 sports a full-QWERTY keyboard hidden under the flick-out touchscreen, the lack of a touchscreen keyboard forces users to get at the physical keyboard for even the most menial text-input tasks.
Well, good news for T-Mobile G1 fans and Android hopefuls alike! The Android OS development roadmap now shows Input Method Framework (IMF) support in the near future. The IMF framework will allow for soft-keyboards and other non-physical data-input methods on Android. The new Android development roadmap also hints at integrated dictionaries that should allow for text-prediction and word suggestions when typing on the touchscreen keyboard.
The Android roadmap aims for a Q1 2009 release of the soft-keyboard feature. Things are looking good for Android!
[Via: HTC Source]
Great news, no onscreen keyboard was summat i was worried about. go on android!!
Sweet, just one more reason to pushing me closer to getting the G1 instead of changing carriers for the Crack Berry.
Will it have landscape capabilities?
That’s great! I’ll be getting my G1 tomorrow, so I’m pretty excited =)