14 DAY TRIAL // Android 2.3 Gingerbread comes to the market with a nice range of enhancements aimed at improving the experience of all users, including a new keyboard, which was touted as offering faster, more accurate typing. The new solution was expected to appear on shelves only starting with December 16th, when the Nexus S by Samsung should be put on sale in the United States, but it seems that some managed to make it available faster than that.
Peter Alfonso of Bugless Beast managed to extract the new soft keyboard from the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system flavor and to make it available for all Android 2.2-based devices that were already rooted.
The soft keyboard was already made available for download, around the web, a recent article on Droid-Life reports. Those who would like to install it should do the following:
1. Download the .zip file containing the repackaged keyboard. 2. Save the .zip file to your SD card. 3. Boot your Android 2.2 device into recovery mode. 4. Flash the .zip file containing the 2.3 keyboard. 5. Reboot your device.
The new solution was made available for Android 2.2 handsets that were rooted mainly due to the fact that they enable users to install files that stock phones do not support, including .libs.
Before proceeding with the installation of this keyboard, users should also consider performing a backup of all data on their devices.
At the same time, those interested in giving it a try should know that not all of the features attached to it work at the moment. Undoubtedly, things will get better in the near future.
It appears that the dictionary is not working properly, that auto-correct is not working at all, and that multi-touch is not active. However, the keyboard comes with working text prediction.
To use the new keyboard, one would have to opening any text field and long press on it. In the menu that would appear, one would have to click on 'Input Method' before hitting 'Android Keyboard'.