Pro1X, Physical keyboard layout issues [Fixed, other software interfering]

[Name_not_avail 64]

Does anyone have their question mark key working on the physical keyboard on the Pro 1X?

I have tried both US and English keyboard layouts, on both my own and my wife's Pro 1X, and I just get a semi-colon when I press the ? key.  Tried it in several apps, but always the same issue.

Also, I can't seem to make the software keyboard stop popping up when I open the physical keyboard, but it's usually just for a second or two before the prawn realizes I'm using the physical keyboard.

Hopefully this is addressed in an OTA update, if these are universal problems.  The physical keyboard is of course the main reason anyone buys these phones.

[Hook 2,834]

To get the question mark or or forward slash, you have to hold down the yellow arrow key (also referred to as the Fn key). I'm assuming this hasn't changed from the Pro1.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Hook

[Name_not_avail 64]

Thanks, but that doesn't work.  

I have tried holding each of the following keys with the "?" key, and none of them results in a "?"

Caps, Shift, Ctrl, yellow arrow, "F", Alt, Sym

So there's at least two 1x phones like this, maybe more (all?).

Did the Pro1 have a separate "?" key? 

The Pro 1x does, which would make it strange that it's necessary to do a key combination for it.

[Hook 2,834]

Sorry, I haven't gotten my Pro1X yet and I haven't seen a good representation of the new keyboard yet,  I should also ask if you are Qwerty, Qwertz or some other layout.  I'll leave this for someone with a Pro1x rather than jumping the gun.

 

[Name_not_avail 64]

No worries, Hook.  Thanks for the reply, if only to bump the thread!

Here is a photo (taken on an inferior device, ha!), of the Pro 1X keyboard.

So you see that it would be kind of weird to have to hit a key combination to get the question mark.

I would have expected the semi-colon to be CTRL-L, but that gives nothing at all.  The semi-colon is created by pressing the "?" key.

 

 

[brunoais 317]

Did you change the keyboard layout in the settings?

[EskeRahn 5,350]

There seems to be some issues with the provided layouts, selecting a number of different languages, none of them gives me letters right of L and P.
Selecting German does swap Y and Z though, all the rest is like the US. So currently not matching the print.

(ADD: Well French AZERTY do move the M up right of the L - the rest still US)

Ignore this, see @Benni's replies below, local issue on mine.

[Benni 183]

All letters work with QWERTZ and the German layout

[EskeRahn 5,350]

11 minutes ago, Benni said:

All letters work with QWERTZ and the German layout

Beyond A-Z?
I do not get neither Ü, Ä nor Ö nor SS et cetera. I ONLY see the Y-Z swap, the rest is US. I should be on latest firmware 2.1.2, Though the hardware is not a retail unit.

[Benni 183]

19 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Beyond A-Z?
I do not get neither Ü, Ä nor Ö nor SS et cetera. I ONLY see the Y-Z swap, the rest is US. I should be on latest firmware 2.1.2, Though the hardware is not a retail unit.

Yes, I can write ü, "+", "*", "~", ö,ä and e.g. "?"

Edited August 18, 2022 by Benni

[EskeRahn 5,350]

46 minutes ago, Benni said:

Yes, I can write ü, "+", "*", "~", ö,ä and e.g. "?"

Great, Really happy that it is not a general issue, but just this one that is messed up 🙂
Can you select other languages too?
Does Ctrl+Space cycle through them as it is supposed to?

[Benni 183]

32 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Great, Really happy that it is not a general issue, but just this one that is messed up 🙂
Can you select other languages too?
Does Ctrl+Space cycle through them as it is supposed to?

I can select a different layout - it results in wrong letters as expected. ctrl+space switches between "Deutsch" and "Englisch USA" if I enable both and the "Ü" key right of "P" types "[" and "{" -. The "+" key types "]" and "}"

Edited August 18, 2022 by Benni

[EskeRahn 5,350]

Just did a factory reset of the Pro1X, and the keyboard works as it is supposed to.

[Rob. S. 1,617]

QWERTZ with 'Physical Keyboard' set to 'German' indeed generally works. Although there are two bugs in the layout which make both the accent grave or backtick < ` > and the apostrophe < ' > unavailable:

Edited August 18, 2022 by Rob. S.

[EskeRahn 5,350]

1 hour ago, EskeRahn said:

Just did a factory reset of the Pro1X, and the keyboard works as it is supposed to.

A little more digging: It is when "Android Assistant" is given the accessibility privilege that the layouts act strangely on Pro1X

[Hook 2,834]

On the Pro1 QWERTY with Stock Android, unless Finqwerty was installed, the keyboard layout was required to be set to "default." Has that changed? I'm assuming so, but just checking. 

I can't wait for that new version of QWERTY(assuming it works 😄 ).

[steeb 27]

I have a QWERTY Pro-1x and the keyboard works flawlessly. I would try a full re-flash of the stock firmware, since it seems so unlikely that you received two broken devices.

[EskeRahn 5,350]

2 hours ago, steeb said:

I have a QWERTY Pro-1x and the keyboard works flawlessly. I would try a full re-flash of the stock firmware, since it seems so unlikely that you received two broken devices.

Be careful with that, unless the keys are saved first. At the least the persist partition should be saved.

I would suggest to start with a factory reset (wiping any user data), and skip everything in the wizard, no restore from anywhere. If it still does not work, try the reflash,

 

[Name_not_avail 64]

Thanks very much for your help, all. 

You put me on the road to figure it out, without flashing and without even doing a factory reset.

I had installed Button Mapper, version 3.09 (current version) on both the phones, and used it to disable the shutter button on the bottom right of the phone.

Once I uninstalled Button Mapper, the physical keyboard behaved as expected, and the question mark key worked again.

So I guess there's no free lunch at present.  I can choose to avoid all those accidental triggerings of the camera button, but only at the cost of losing some of the functions of the physical keyboard.

Hopefully this is dealt with in an update of either Button Mapper or the FX firmware on the phone at some point.

Thanks again, all.

[VaZso 1,988]

16 minutes ago, Name_not_avail said:

Once I uninstalled Button Mapper, the physical keyboard behaved as expected, and the question mark key worked again.

So I guess there's no free lunch at present.  I can choose to avoid all those accidental triggerings of the camera button, but only at the cost of losing some of the functions of the physical keyboard.

Hopefully this is dealt with in an update of either Button Mapper or the FX firmware on the phone at some point.

Button Mapper has used to cause problems on my Pro1 after some time - that time I have thought the plenty buttons of the phone has caused some slow down, so I felt it is better to not use it.

Anyway, just wanted to write I have no problems writing question mark and other keys on my Pro1X but it seems you have already figured it out. 🙂

[Tell-Son 6]

Having a QWERTZ-Pro1X and the same issues. Actually all specific physical keyboard signs like äöü? do not work any more. or give a complete different value  In the first days of usage I think they did fine.

Uninstalling Android  Assistant for example did not gave a positive result. Are there other ways except the factory reset ? As having a lot of apps (including several e-banking-ones), it would be nice to avoid the reinstall of all those.
 

[Hook 2,834]

You could try uninstalling apps one at a time, ones that aren't challenging to set up  and see if the keyboard works okay afterwards.  A long process possibly, but maybe you can guess at possible culprits.

[EskeRahn 5,350]

3 hours ago, Tell-Son said:

Having a QWERTZ-Pro1X and the same issues. Actually all specific physical keyboard signs like äöü? do not work any more. or give a complete different value  In the first days of usage I think they did fine.

Uninstalling Android  Assistant for example did not gave a positive result. Are there other ways except the factory reset ? As having a lot of apps (including several e-banking-ones), it would be nice to avoid the reinstall of all those.
 

That they worked initially is a good sign, so most likely you can avoid the full reset.

I agree with @Hook's suggestion, but start with any app that is mentioned as active under Accessibility - or just switch its rights off under accessibility. And if that does not do it, focus on anything keyboard-related, or 'fancy', the more complex the larger the risk of it trying to be clever and mess of stuff.

You could try to just STOP rather than uninstall stuff first, with the risk of them being brought back to live, making tests harder. A reboot often restarts a lot of junk you may have stopped - thanks Android.... 🤢

You MIGHT need to do a reboot after uninstalling some stuff, to see the effect.

Note on the first thing, if you did a Google restore of apps this MIGHT take quite a while, so you could have seen the keys working before some settings messed things up.

Good hunting - and please report back when you narrow down the culprit.

[Benni 183]

I would also double check the selected layout for the physical keyboard.

[Tell-Son 6]

8 minutes ago, Benni said:

I would also double check the selected layout for the physical keyboard.

thanks for the hint. But I did very very often ....