Help keyboard wont keep set on XT9?

[red97xj]

Hey everyone, hoping you can answer a few questions, I am not on verizon now, but I am loving the incredible, and will likely make the jump. I use a nokia now, so Android is all new to me. I went in to verizon last night to play with one and had it in my hands for about an hour playing with it (SO customizable!). 2 things were driving me crazy!

1. I like the number/phone keypad for typing vs the qwerty for one handed texting, I found in settings how to turn that one on, and like the layout, but every time I went to enter text, it was on abc, not xt9 (xt9 is predictive), abc has 3 letters to a key. its easy to hit the abc/xt9 switch button, but annoying. ANYWAY TO FIX THAT?

2. I thought there should be a way to switch keyboards while using a keyboard. Example: I am typing a text one handed using the number pad, and I can't find how to switch to qwerty with out closing the text and going fairly deep into settings. Is there a way to do it faster? Can I make a shortcut to one of the 7 home screens?

Thanks so much for all your help with helping a newbie out!

 

[sunthas]

I've posted on this topic as well.
I came from BB pearl, where I think the typing still works better than the keyboard on the DINC.

I purchased Ultra Keyboard from the Market. It does a better job matching what I'm used to, there is a free version you can try out. Still not perfect.

On my old BB I could retype a word that it wasn't getting and it would let me override it. Now (perhaps with Ultra) its guessing the word regardless of how many times I type it. Makes it hard to type in proper names and such.

Anyhow, I like you am still looking for a better keyboard solution. There are some limitations, I think by Sense, that keep us from using XT9 in the market search bar and in the URL bar. On BB I got very good at switching back and forth as needed. Perhaps I should make a video of the difference.

 

[red97xj]

Perhaps I should make a video of the difference.

Video would be great! I dont have a inc yet, and was reading that people with swype will long press in the text box to pull up some sort of menu that will let them switch it on and off.... can you try this with your dinc to see if it works?

Thanks!
Jason

P.S. I am also wondering if there is a short cut that can be on a homescreen to switch from qwerty to number pad.

 

[sunthas]

Just like on my pearl you can turn XT9 off and on at the touch of a button. However there are some screens that don't allow XT9 such as web addresses and the market search bar.

I'm trying to come up with a good sentence or group of words that I can use to demonstrate the different in the two. So far the biggest difference I've found is it was much easier to create a nonsense word or a proper name on the BB Pearl because it assumed if you backspaced and retyped a character you meant the other character on the key and it overrode spell check.

 

[red97xj]

Just like on my pearl you can turn XT9 off and on at the touch of a button. However there are some screens that don't allow XT9 such as web addresses and the market search bar.

I'm trying to come up with a good sentence or group of words that I can use to demonstrate the different in the two. So far the biggest difference I've found is it was much easier to create a nonsense word or a proper name on the BB Pearl because it assumed if you backspaced and retyped a character you meant the other character on the key and it overrode spell check.

i didnt know the number pad xt9 only showed up in certain screens. the problem is that when it does pop up (I was attempting to type a text message) i didn't look up and started typing away, only to look up and see jumble. So I had to backspace, then hit the xt9 number. thats fine, but then a minute later when I came back to type in a different app (I forget where, maybe calendar?) it did the same thing, it didn't stay on the xt9, so I guess were stuck just opening message and learning to hit the abc/xt9 button BEFORE we type, EVERY time. annoying.

anyone got a fix?

 

[sunthas]

Ultra Keyboard from the market defaults to XT9 whenever it can, so I don't experience the problem you are talking about nearly as often. Only on areas where XT9 is not allowed (by Droid I assume).

 

[DOOG9517]

The XT9 tries to be intelligent by not activating in fields where you may need to input something peculiar, such as an email address, or a specific word to search for, or even names. It should only activate when in a text field like a message body.