14 DAY TRIAL // Ads are everywhere you look these days, but you wouldn’t normally expect to see them right on your phone’s keyboard, showing up every time you type a new word.
This is what’s happening on HTC smartphones these days, as the TouchPal Keyboard, which ships by default on the majority of HTC models, has started displaying banner ads right above the keyboard whenever users start typing.
The issue, because this can only be referred to as an issue that we hope HTC would fix as soon as possible, has already been confirmed on a series of phones, including the company’s very own flagships HTC 10 and HTC U11, with the latter being the most recent device launched earlier this year. We haven’t yet seen a single ad on our HTC U11, but judging from the growing number of posts on social media, they should start showing up very soon.
Uninstall the latest update
While little has been said officially about how ads ended up being displayed on the keyboard of HTC phones, there’s a chance that it all happened because of an update that TouchPal released for its keyboard.
Since HTC devices ship with this keyboard as the default system app, its models started showing advertisements as well, though it’s hard to imagine that the phone manufacturer has no control over the updates that its software partners ship.
When contacted by the army of angry users who got ads on their keyboards, HTC recommended everyone to uninstall the most recent update to the TouchPal application to restore the previous version which does not have advertisements.
It goes without saying that this is just a temporary workaround, and as soon as the app updates again the ads should return to user devices. On the other hand, HTC might actually attempt to buy some time until it reaches out to TouchPal to figure out how ads ended up on its keyboard, though there’s no confirmation that the issue would be resolved anytime soon.
In the meantime, users who are angered with HTC’s failure to keep their devices ad-free do not need to give up on their phones entirely, but to switch to a different keyboard app. SwiftKey and Gboard are the best we can think of right now, and be sure you give them a try.
UPDATE: HTC has issued a statement on this, explaining that ads showing up on its devices were just an error and the company is already working to have them removed.
"Due to an error, some customers are seeing ads on the phone keyboard. We're working to fix the error and remove these as quickly as possible," the firm said.