Andrea Canton

Hi! I come back to create my entries in english, but, maybe, I’ll translate this post in italian. I’m editing my wordpress theme for make my posts multilingual! By the way, few months ago, I’ve bought an HTC Magic (Vodafone). I’m a geek and for this reason I’ve decided to install a different version of Android™: Google ION (edited by nk02). Really better, faster, lighter than the pre-installed Vodafone version (I think the worst in the world). This version have, as unique input method (for now), the HTC’s keyboard, better known as HTCIME. Instead the original version of Android™ have the LatinIME. Let’s start the challenge!

The challenge

Features	HTCIME	LatinIME
Keyboards The supported keyboards	QWERTY, phone keypad and blackberry keypad with t9	Only QWERTY
Calibration Tool Have the calibration tool?	Yes! But you calibrate on a specific situation (eg. sit on a chair, instead wolking, etc.)	No…
Colours The colours selected for the layouts	The writings are black on white background, so it’s more hard to read for the eyes.	White on dark: easy to read without effort.
Buttons How the space has been used	Two buttons completely useless: pulldown keyboard, there is the fisic “back” button for this, and keyboard settings, if I want to set the keyboard I go to the global settings!	Every button is useful. There is also a Jolly button, in bottom right position, that change according to situation (eg. smiles for texts or “tab” in forms)
Control The phone is YOURS. YOU write the text. Do YOU have the control?	You can’t disable the auto-caps when you start a sentence. You can’t disable the auto-switch from the numbers/puntuaction/simbols’s layer to the letters’s layer after a space.	YOU have the control. YOU switch from the numbers’s layer to the letters’s layer. YOU can disable the auto-caps when you start a sentence.
System Integration How is integrated the keyboard? How much it weigh on the system?	It’s a third party application, so from the system it’s considered as a process that spend memory (and slow down the system).	It’s native!
Browser Mode How get away with the browser?	The spacebar disappear!!! How I can take advantage of the google search?!?	All right. There is space for .com, / and the spacebar.
Auto-completion How works autocompletion? Can you add words?	You can add words. But the autocompletion it’s invasive: auto-select a word when you are writing one and after a space set this word without asking you. So if you want to write “ahahaha” or “asdfahdpihe”, you have to disable this function (or add these words).	You can’t add words. But you can set that the autocompletion gives to you only suggestions that you can select and don’t insert the word after a space.

Conclusions

If you want the phone keypad (or don’t want to learn to use the qwerty), you are forced to choose the HTCIME with all his bugs and problems. If, instead, you want to use a good qwerty you should use the original LatinIME (with your language package), because gives to YOU the control! Anyway Android™ is a great OS and permit you to install both keyboard (being careful about the both bugs and problems!).

However I’ve tried to install the LatinIME, but maybe go in conflit, with something that I’ll find, and fail the installation When I’ll, finally, install it, I’ll inform you (obviously).

Post comments and share your thoughts!