Checklist for a possible move from BlackBerry

[mbert 2]

As BlackBerry's future engagement on the device market is highly doubtful, my current device will probably have reached end of life by the end of this year. While I am still almost perfectly happy with it I am already looking out for a possible successor. And while an all-touch device might even be a possible choice, the Pro1 has attracted my attention. 

Having also backed (and then immediately sold) the Unihertz Titan I have started understanding that a physical keyboard alone is by far not enough to be productive and happy with one's device. The software is as important. And since there's little existing software out there for physical keyboards, whoever makes a new device basically has to develop all the necessary software support. 

For me a number of things my BlackBerry does well have become absolutely essential:

• Support for Ukrainian language (dictionary, auto-completion, etc...)
• Support for translliteration input of non-latin character sets, e.g. ашерты for Russian and ашерти for Ukrainian (and, no, support for only Russian would not be enough)
• Switch of language "on the fly", i.e. have a shortcut that allows me to set the input language to one out of several configured languages. BlackBerry can even handle languages with latin character sets all at the same time (i.e. while typing, I can write both German and English, and auto-correction and suggestions work seamlessly), but switching language on the phone would be enough

The Titan did not have any of this, and I did not get the impression it would ever have it. I was able to install BlackBerry Keyboard on it, but its goodies would only work with latin-based languages.

Now after having searched the net for a while I have been unable to find some conclusive information - how about the Pro1? 

[EskeRahn 5,427]

The keyboard software that comes with the Pro1 is unfortunately very limited at the moment. They have poured all their efforts into getitng the hardware delivered and expectedly soon in generally available.

Quick keyboard-layout switch is build into Android. And is done by Ctrl-Space cycling through the keyboard layouts you have selected.

The software FinQWERTY is an open source program that tackles the most imports caveats of the stock keyboard-software.

And I'm sure more layouts will follow as F(x)tec and/or the users create them.

The print on the keys will obviously not currently match neither Russian nor Ukrainian. Whether there will be enough interest to have a physical print is unknown. Though a nice idea on labels/stickers have been made in another thread.

[mbert 2]

 

Thank you for your reply. 

2 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

The print on the keys will obviously not currently match neither Russian nor Ukrainian.

That won't be necessary. For cyrillic layouts there are two standards: the national layouts that don't have much to do with 'qwerty' (that's what is usually used for on-screen keyboards), and the so-called 'phonetic' layouts where the cyrillic characters are matched to a 'qwerty' layout as good as is possible. That's the most natural choice when you have a hardware keyboard with latin character set. For Russian and Ukrainian this is usually called 'yasherty' (яшерты / яшерти), and you'll have 'a' on 'a', 'с' on 's', 'д' on 'd' and so forth. 

When I got my Titan it turned out they had implemented the national layout for the hardware keyboard. Since many people don't know the keyboard layout by heart this was pretty useless. That's the reason I was asking here. And I am pretty sure I won't be the only one making this a priority when deciding to buy a device with hardware keyboard. 

[VaZso 1,997]

3 hours ago, mbert said:

 

Thank you for your reply. 

That won't be necessary. For cyrillic layouts there are two standards: the national layouts that don't have much to do with 'qwerty' (that's what is usually used for on-screen keyboards), and the so-called 'phonetic' layouts where the cyrillic characters are matched to a 'qwerty' layout as good as is possible. That's the most natural choice when you have a hardware keyboard with latin character set. For Russian and Ukrainian this is usually called 'yasherty' (яшерты / яшерти), and you'll have 'a' on 'a', 'с' on 's', 'д' on 'd' and so forth. 

When I got my Titan it turned out they had implemented the national layout for the hardware keyboard. Since many people don't know the keyboard layout by heart this was pretty useless. That's the reason I was asking here. And I am pretty sure I won't be the only one making this a priority when deciding to buy a device with hardware keyboard. 

Keyboard layout can be easily modified under Android and FinQwerty does help a lot by adding 3rd-party layouts to Android without the need of rooting.

So if I understand well, if these layouts will be done by somebody and included in stock firmware or even they appear in FinQwery for example, then it is a solution for that.

As the source code of FinQwerty is available on GitHub, the most simple way of adding my own layout was to build a version for myself which has my layout included.
I have also put a layout file in the specific thread here which is a standard layout so it worth to be included in FinQwerty, I hope it will happen to be built-in later.

I can even use Android's built-in layout switching (CTRL+Space as @EskeRahn wrote) so I think what you would like to use can be created relatively easily if the actual texts written on the keyboard does not really matter but the actual layout behind the keys.
However, it still has to be done by somebody, but again, it is not complicated.

[mbert 2]

Thank you, that sounds really promising! There is no hurry for me now anyway, but now I know what I need to watch. The Pro1 is a very interesting device (though I would really prefer a classical slider like the BlackBerry PRIV), and being able to have an eye on update policy etc. in the meantime is a good thing anyway before spending a larger amount of money on the next handset. 

[silversolver 849]

4 hours ago, mbert said:

Thank you, that sounds really promising! There is no hurry for me now anyway, but now I know what I need to watch. The Pro1 is a very interesting device (though I would really prefer a classical slider like the BlackBerry PRIV), and being able to have an eye on update policy etc. in the meantime is a good thing anyway before spending a larger amount of money on the next handset. 

Try to find someone who has one somewhere nearby you so you can try it first, perhaps? There's a lot of people in this forum all over the world, and more if you count the lurkers ;)