So we are still in the first real day of the Android era, but we are already hearing about complaints with the T-mobile G1. The main gripe seems to be that the G1 loves the battery so much that it doesn’t want to share any of the juice with you. There is some truth to this, but that’s not what we are worried about at the moment. The second main complaint about the G1 is the lack of a virtual keyboard on the screen. The full QWERTY is simply amazing. I”ve been typing away all day and have gotten used to the fact that they key are a bit too flush to the surface. But it’s a bit annoying, having to slide open the G1 every time I want to enter in some data. A virtual keyboard would make the G1 a dat bit more user frienly and would allow user to use their device with one hand.
At the moment, Android does not support any virtual keyboard, but that may soon change. It turns out that the Android roadmap has somethign in store for us that should be released in Q1 of 2009. Here are some of the details from the site:
This feature will enable support for input methods other than physical keyboards, for example soft keyboards. IMF will also enable application developers to provide IME (see below) applications based on the framework.
Input method engines (IME)
IME will support soft keyboards, a dictionary of suggestions, and a suggestion algorithm. The Android platform may contain few reference IMEs, and developers can provide IME applications through the Android Market.
