I designed a keyboard for my phone. Ask me anything :)
I designed a keyboard for my phone. Ask me anything :)
It's all free (if you make it yourself) and open source.
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I’m pretty sure my first android phone was the Droid and it had a physical keyboard underneath the screen, which slid out to reveal the keyboard. Since on-screen keyboard was also an option, the only time I used the physical keyboard was when I remembered it was an option that I never used.
That may have been different if keyboard shortcuts worked on it. (I don’t know if they did or not, but if they did I didn’t know about it back then)
I had a HTC G1, the first android phone, it had a slide out keyboard, and it was nice. The mechanism was satisfying to fidget with and it was a full 5 row keyboard with enough space you could comfortably type even in a terminal emulator. The screen was small, and the onscreen keyboard at the time sucked for autocorrect.
I'm glad the track ball, and the chin didn't stick around.
I didn't have a Droid 1, but I heard it's keyboard sucked.
I had an HTC Universal, with a keyboard that was so huge that it effectively masked how bad the keys themselves were.
I then had a Droid 3, which was much better and then a Droid 4 which was the sweet spot. I had Linux in a chroot (still do), and it was an almost desktop-like experience with the 5-row keyboard and the touchscreen acting as a trackpad. It was really good.
I tried making different side-sliding attachments, but these are always chunky, center of balance is always terrible and you need to use Bluetooth, which also sucks.
So I ended up sticking a Blackberry keyboard to my phone. I still wish I had a landscape keyboard, but this is the best I could come up with so far.