Database Users

Text input lag

Has any body else noticed a lag when entering text using the keyboard. I am getting quite quick now but it seems like the phone has trouble keeping up.
Also, a huge thank you to all the guys how work hard producing applications and ports for this forum.

Yep...must be normal for WM6
My TyTN II had the lag, My Raphael had the lag and YES, My X1 also has the lag when I first start typing messages.
I've come to expect it with WM6.x...

My text input lagged at times after I installed Touchflo 3D and had it running.

You would think that with all the things the phone can do with ease, it would not have a problem imputting text............

nicon2k said:
Has any body else noticed a lag when entering text using the keyboard. I am getting quite quick now but it seems like the phone has trouble keeping up.
Also, a huge thank you to all the guys how work hard producing applications and ports for this forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I Initially found a lot of lag with my X1 keyboard input but solved it by turning off 'Word Completion' - it seems the keyboard itself is not lagging but the phone trying to predict what word you are typing slows the whole thing down. I personally dont think predictive text is required with a QWERTY keyboard so I have turned it off and no lag since Can be found in Settings\Personal\Input\Word Completion\"Suggest Words When Entering Text"

SamAsQ said:
I Initially found a lot of lag with my X1 keyboard input but solved it by turning off 'Word Completion' - it seems the keyboard itself is not lagging but the phone trying to predict what word you are typing slows the whole thing down. I personally dont think predictive text is required with a QWERTY keyboard so I have turned it off and no lag since Can be found in Settings\Personal\Input\Word Completion\"Suggest Words When Entering Text"
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Click to collapse
I turned that off a while ago, it didn't help that much.
The only thing that seems to work for me is a soft reset.
ÅÄÖ lags also on the swedish model. When typing ÅÄÖ they can be located anywere in the text, a VERY odd bugg!

onscreen finger typing

Is there a program that will let me type with my finger on screen? I have looked and had no luck. My problem is I work 12 hour shifts in a car and sometimes it would be nice to be able to send sms like I was using a standard phone. Sorry if I just missed the app and just for info I am running DCD 3.2.6 and looking at upgrading now.

i have i believe atoms phone pad which is the normal keypad on screen with t9 support/numeric/alpha, so if i need a quick txt no need to slide the keyboard out the push the on screen keyboard and go at it like a normal phone.

http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-cootek-touchpal-v2-0.html
This is the only onscreen keyboard you will ever need. Also it sets itself as default keyboard and stays that way even after soft reset.
Also stay with 3.2.6, not quite as much memory as 3.3.xx but much less buggy with calling screen and wierd sounds and stuff. If you are having memory issues install oxios.

Keyboard typing lagging

it lags really badly in SMS typing. It seems to be much better in emails and other applications. Anyone know why?
Thanks

I've noticed that the keyboard can lag sometimes, but I don;t know why.
The most annoying thing I've had was on a particular rom I flashed (I can't remember which one now) where the first letter or two lagged when entering a web address into opera/ie, so that they would appear after the 3rd letter or so. Like if I typed:
xda-developers.com
I might get
adx-developers.com
That annoyed me so much, I just flashed to another rom pretty much straight away...

Does your phones have a custom software keyboard installed like Touch HD or any other 3:rd party keyboard?

Try to disable word completetion.

emwdava said:
Does your phones have a custom software keyboard installed like Touch HD or any other 3:rd party keyboard?
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My keyboard lagged with the touchHD keyboard too -very bad, when the first letter became the third or forth.
Now I use SPB Keyboard and all the lags are gone.

skycamefalling said:
My keyboard lagged with the touchHD keyboard too -very bad, when the first letter became the third or forth.
Now I use SPB Keyboard and all the lags are gone.
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Click to collapse
are you saying that if i install SPB Keyboard that it will improve typing on the slide out keyboard as well? i'm asking 'cause i'm experiencing lag on it as well

Why can't people answer the question?
Do you or don't you have any 3:rd party keyboard software installed like the Touch HD keyboard?

RageDemon said:
are you saying that if i install SPB Keyboard that it will improve typing on the slide out keyboard as well? i'm asking 'cause i'm experiencing lag on it as well
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Click to collapse
As emwdava already asked: Do you have a 3rd party keyboard (e.g. TouchHD Keyboard) installed?
If that's the case, try deinstalling this keyboard and see if the lags go away.
If the system is running better then and you want to have a software keyboard, I would recommend SPB Keyboard because it's good and it does not cause any lags as the TouchHD Keyboard before.
So SPB Keyboard will NOT help getting the lags away, but it is a usable keyboard that do not cause lags.

i hv the THD keyboard installed and i experience the lag too when im typing an address into opera. with both the THD keyboard and the hardware keyboard.
at first was kinda annoying but now i just wait for the cursor to move in front of the first letter before i continue typing. less than two seconds. im pretty patient

i have the issue of the lag on the hardware keyboard, i types and after few moments i see the words appear.
I have TouchIT 3.01 rom and SPB keyboard, i will try disabling auto-completition and do the other tips and see the results

i have the same issue..
i just jacks rom 1.06
anly keyboard i have installed that is not with the rom = NullKB
i have word completion disabled.

i have the same problem sort of...
I've got a swedish xperia with stock rom, itjes manila cab, fingerboard and touchpal installed, disabled auto-correction and no word proposals.
but i must say that even when I hard reset my unit the problem is still there when i multi-task (even just a few programs). but for me it only affects my swedish letters å ä and ö. never for any other letters. it's so annoying and i hope that SE or someone here could fix it... perhaps it's already fixed?

Same problem with the hardware keyboard. It lags about 1 second or similar. You can keep typing, it will catch up eventually, and it won't lose any words/letters.
The software SIP doesn't have a problem, but maybe because I type slower on that, than the hardware keyboard haha.

Same
I'm using Finger Keyboard 2, When I type with the hardware keyboard it sometimes lags behind me by about 2 words at the very start of my message then goes fine after that.
Using Finger Keyboard 2 itself is normal, but switching it on takes about 30 seconds or more sometimes, I don't know if this is common but will probably remove it if it continues because the only reason i keep it is to save sliding, otherwise it's quicker to just slide and I would have finished what i was doing in the time it takes to load.

Anyone got any tips for texting as me and my HD are about to fall out!

Don't get me wrong, i love my phone and i think that it is a seriously cool piece of technology, but we are just not getting along at the moment when it comes to texting.
I've come from a n95, where i could quite happily bash out text messages all day with very few errors, however, on my HD i can hardly type a word correctly either using the full qwerty or phone keypad. I've tried to persevere with both, but things seem to be getting worse rather than better. I'm fine when using the stylus, but when using fingers I am all over the place.
The thing that annoys me most is when i press a key and the key increases in size (as it should) but then nothing appears in the message. The space bar is the worst culprit for this, i'll be typing away and the space bar will acknowledge the press, but when i check the message something like teoitoerteritktret will be there as the space bar presses haven't been put between the words.
So please help me and my HD to remain friends and if you can suggest alternative keyboards that can be downloaded or any tips that you have I'd be more than grateful to hear about them
Spud

For myself, texting has been great on the HD and I have pretty big fingers (i'm 6"4'...and sorry for the 'standard' units). What might help is using the keyboard in landscape if you're not already doing that, that way the keys are alot bigger, especialy in qwerty mode. Also, T9 might be helpful since it corrects mistakes (like hitting the wrong key for one of the letters). As for hitting the key but not having it input it into the text, that occurs when you touch the screen where the key is (good) but before picking up the finger moving it of that key (bad). This tends to occur when you 'roll' your finger onto/off a key. Another thing which might help is this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=479464&highlight=finger+keyboard (there might be a v2 out already...or still in testing not sure) which is suppose to be a more finger friendly keyboard. A last option which I can give you from the top of my head is Dutty's v1.8 ROM which i believe uses a different keyboard which looks a bit more finger friendly as well.
Hope atleast some of this helps and good luck

I had a bit of difficulty typing at the beginning with the HD, I tried all the keyboards. Even in landscape (full QWERTY) although better than portrayed I found the Compact Keyboard to be the most effective way of typing. I was going to choose the default phone keypad where you have 3 letters but with compact QWERTY you have 2 keys on each key which is even better/faster/accurate (T9-wise). I typed for 2 weeks and now rarely make mistakes, sometimes I even type taking my eyes of the screen because I have memorised the distance between the keys.

I hated the keyboards and nearly wanted to throw the HD in the bin.
This is what I recommend for fast accurate texting.
Use PHONEPAD keyboard. Large keys so you can't accidentally hit the wrong key.
Turn on T9 input (not ABC)
In T9 settings, from Settings, Input, Options menu, uncheck Auto-Substitution and Word Completion in ABC mode. The other two leave checked.
In Word Completion tab, uncheck Suggest words when entering text and check box for Enable auto correct.
I found my frustration came from the words i was typing were automatically changed and substitued when i didn't want them to.
good luck!

Do you know if Cootek TouchPal works on HTC Touch HD ?
I use it on both my HTC Prophet and Diamond and I really like it.
IMHO, it's much better than the provided full and compact qwerty keyboards.
The only drawback is that it's not free software.
Just my two cents.
Cheers.
David

Thanks for the input guys, i've gone for the finger keyboard option to start with and intial impressions are that it is much better, not perfect though, but certainly better

Try getting a smaller keyboard and you will have a great time typing with the stylus.

i can type pretty fast on the phone pad method on my touch HD with t9 activated. the interface is good, much better than the one they included on the universal.
i cant type as fast as i did on my touch dual, but almost as fast now since i've had practise.
i never got the point of full qwerty onscreen, i cant stand them lol, i always use phonepad method. plus with this you can text using one hand

movig from a physical keyboard to a touchscreen is indeed a big change of habits. rather than suggesting a input method I would suggest you some behaviors that helped me a lot in the beginning:
-do not try to type when walking as it makes aiming the keys more difficult
-try to look at the actual keys not at the word written, look at the word every now and then to check for errors
-take your time, it needs concentration on the beginning a.k.a do not try to type too fast just to realize you can do it, speed comes with practice
-try all the input methods with all possible combinations to see what fits you most
-not really the thread to discuss about this, but there are some tweaks and programs available to your device that help a lot, mainly like:
touchresponse by snailslug which provides a small vibration every time you hit the screen, this helps on understanding whether you actually pressed the key
hd tweak and advanced configuration tools can increase the sensitivity of your touchscreen so that less pressure is needed to interact with it
these small tips and a lot of patience helped me a lot in the beginning, now (just after a couple months) I happily type with full qwerty on portrait only both with 2 and 1 hand (and i'm 1m90 tall so don't have exactly small fingers ... and I feel there is a lot more room for improvement

I have just upgraded to the Touch HD. My previous two phones were the TyTn and the TyTn 2 with hardware keyboards, and as you can imagine how well I'd get on with the touch screen for typing was my biggest concern.
I've played around a bit and found the transition much easier than expected, I find that using the QWERTY keyboard with the T9 dictionary turned on works best for me.
As someone else has mentioned, don't try and touch type, that will only lead to mistakes, look at the buttons as you press them and then check your text every so often to make sure it's how you think it should be.

Try Cootek's Touchpal keyboard, best I've tried so far for HD.
There are some others that you may get on with, like Resco and CM.

try fingerkeyboard, it works better for me than the stock HTC keyboard

I've always used FSK (FULL SIZE KEYBOARD) by Spb. I've used it back when I was using an Eten and 5 HTC products later, I've got it on my HD.
Because the screen is larger, it has the tiniest amount of distortion on HD but nothing that makes a big difference.
Like someone mentioned, I've gotten use to using a stylus so many times it's just as fast for me to use the little keyboard.
But then again, I've never been one of those 500 texts a minute person anyway.
HTH's,
Mark

jst first day of my HD usage...i used to have a nokia E61i (still got it) and coupled with nimbuzz i was easily using my mobile to chat to friends and family for abt 3 hours non stop easily like np... but...jst 15 mins of typing on HD and like omg i could only see one line of the conversation box ( landscape mode) and den the keyboard was lil small on te potrait mode. btw...used finger keyboard ver 2 to type...n in jst some minutes my wrist was hurting from keeping the mobile up ( e61i waws heavy as well but was no problemo to me :|) so u people got any sugessions i could try ? Else i'll have to switch to Xperia X1 cuz i would have had no choice left ....help me out plz guys...

I was using my nephew's iPod Touch the other day and the keyboard had a feature I quite liked. When you pressed a key it popped up, but above your finger, so you could actually see what key had been pressed. Are there any apps that copy this?

Plonker said:
I was using my nephew's iPod Touch the other day and the keyboard had a feature I quite liked. When you pressed a key it popped up, but above your finger, so you could actually see what key had been pressed. Are there any apps that copy this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the new HTC keyboard from the new manilla has this that feature now. I think you can get the new keyboard from the app section or the development part.

I was very used to physical keypad on Nokia phone. When I switched over to D810/Trinity, I was using Phonepad, then when TouchPal was launched, I started using it. Since then, TouchPal has been my keyboard. I am using the compact qwerty instead of Phonepad layout. TouchPal has pretty good predictive engine. If you type mostly English or those language supported by TouchPal, then it will be great. Else predictive engine may not be that helpful.
Anyway, what's helpful about TouchPal is also the swipe feature. e.g. swiping the word backward give you the past tense, upward gives you the plural, forward gives you the continuous tense, downward give you the other choices related to the word.
On the key it self, swiping left or right allow you to select the specific letter in the key : 2 letters per key, plus a number (bottom) and a symbol (top). Swiping upward gives you the capital letter, downward gives you the symbol and up and then downward give you the number. Cool, right?!
It comes with copy and paste as well as other useful symbol, preset words features.

For those who really really hate typing, check out ShapeWriter. You 'glide' from one key to another without lifting your finger. Just that the keyboard layout is not too big. The key is pretty small. I'm waiting for 'Swype' which has the same technology, but with bigger key. Sadly, it's not out yet.

Software behind the hardware keyboard

So I have found the keyboard to be somewhat fraustrating. Not because it is virtual, but because of the software behind it.
First of all, it is rather strange that you cannot set more than one keybaord. Essentially, the device can have two keyboards that you might regularly swap between: the hardware keyboard and the one screen keyboard one might use while in tablet mode. The hardware keyboard uses the autocorrect of the keyboard you have set as your software keyboard. You cannot set seperate keyboard engines for the hardware and software keyboard.
As I said, the autocorrect/engine behind the hardware keyboard is dependant on your choice of software keybaord. However, as far as I can tell, only the defualt TouchPal keyboard provides any autocorrect for the hardware keybaord. The stock android keyboard offers no autocorrect with the hardware keyboard.
On a related note, TouchPal is awful. The autocorrect works pretty badly and is basically very annoying to use. I won't bore you with the details, but things like autocorrecting to a new word when you go back to edit a mistake. This makes it almost unusable.
Also the touch pad is very bad. No two funger scrolling means that again, it is pretty much useless.
I think the Yoga Book is a great device in most respects. Its intersting that all of these problems relate to the software and could potentially be fixed by Lenovo or there may even be fixes out there now.
Has anyone found any solutions to these problems? Thanks, Liam

I completely agree with you and am having the same frustration with the software behind the keyboard. So far the best solution I have found is to use SwiftKey or Swiftkey Beta (not sure which is best yet). With a bit of tweaking you can get decent auto complete and auto correct using both the halo and on screen keyboard. Much better than Touchpal at least. A couple of issues I have found using Swiftkey and halo keyboard: 1) auto complete seems to turn off when resuming from sleep mode (tapping the keyboard button on the top row reactivates it) 2) in WhatsApp Tablet app, after pressing Enter to send a message, the next message gets double words - I. E. Auto correct adds to what you type, doesn't replace it.

I can confirm that switching to SwiftKey makes the hardware keyboard usable! I'm actually using the keyboard to type this now. Naturally, I'm making tons of mistakes but it is catching and correcting almost all of them!
Can confirm that SwiftKey easily switches between physical keyboard and on-screen keyboard when the physical keyboard is toggled on and off.
If anyone is still using the default software keyboard, switch now!!!

Thanks for the tip! This makes a big difference! Have either of you found a way to get auto capitalise to work? The setting is enabled but it doesn't do anythig.

My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?

faeArai said:
My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?
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Click to collapse
I have found that SwiftKey enters the main suggested word when I press space. This is good for most of the time, but annoying when:
-I want to select a suggestion that is not the main suggested word (particularly a new word that it doesn't recognise)
-I want to add punctuation directly after the main suggested word (here, because I input the punctuation rather than pressing space, the suggested word is not entered)
I have certainly found using SwiftKey to be the best experience. It's quite a passive autocorrect that doesn't get in the way too much. I got so sick of TouchPal which really gets in your face with its incorrect predictions.
But still there is a lot of room for improvement. It's such a shame that it's terrible software that lets down this keyboard. In particular I don't understand why:
- Some keyboards (like the Google Keyboard) don't offer any correction or prediction when enabled. Does Android maybe treat the Halo keyboard as an external keyboard (which I suppose you wouldn't want predictive features for)?
- Keyboards that do offer prediction don't seem to respond to changes to their settings (I can't get SwiftKey to auto capitalise the first letter of a sentence for example). @thespinner02 mentioned tweaking with SwiftKey settings- I assume they meant for the onscreen keyboard because these settings don't do anything for the Halo keybaord.
I wonder whether there is a keyboard out there in the Play Store that works better with the Yoga Book. I'll try a few and let you guys know if I find one.

I tried several solutions but couldn't find anything good. Hardware keyboards are not that common on Android platform, I guess.

Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I didn't notice that- smart spacing etc makes a massive difference!
Pretty much my only problem with SwiftKey now is that it sometimes creates its own weird textbook instead of typing directly into the text field. But that's not a massive problem.
Also I sometimes accidentally change input method. Maybe I'm using a keyboard shortcut by mistake?

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In settings for hardware keyword I get no harder key found?
Went into Swift settings in onscreen. How to get settings for Halo?

With Yoga Book in laptop mode. Settings / Language & input / SwiftKey Keyboard / Typing / Voice & Other Input

You also need to make sure 'show input method' is not enabled in the keyboard settings/selector popup.
Does anyone else experience a problem with SwiftKey where in some text fields your text goes into a little popup text box at the bottom of the screen as well as the intended text field? And then to get rid of the popup text box you have to tap 'next'. This occurs in the Facebook messenger app for example.
Any way to disable it?
It seems to do this when the text field is small, but other keyboards just expend the text field as you type. The popup text box it creates doesn't expand anyway, so it doesn't offer extra functionality and is just an annoyance.