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Virtual touchscreen keyboard coming to Android OS

By: , IntoMobile
Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 2:44 PM
Android OS to support touchscreen keyboard

Android OS to support touchscreen keyboard

The Android OS is now official and ready to bring Google’s mobile platform to the world. The T-Mobile 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]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • rich dowd

    Great news, no onscreen keyboard was summat i was worried about. go on android!!

  • bmmr11

    Sweet, just one more reason to pushing me closer to getting the G1 instead of changing carriers for the Crack Berry.

  • bmmr11

    Will it have landscape capabilities?

  • Matt

    That's great! I'll be getting my G1 tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited =)