The 3 Steps To Setting Up Your Android Tablet’s Touchscreen Keyboard

Over a year after the initial launch of the iPad, we are finally seeing some decent tablet alternatives on the market. Recent legal quarrels between Apple and Samsung indicate that competition will be fierce. Obviously, the most recent Android Honeycomb tablets are up to par, even in the eyes of Apple.
If you have recently switched to an Android 3.x tablet and are struggling with the keyboard, this article may help you out. It shows how to set up the touchscreen keyboard and I suggest an alternative keyboard containing all of the special characters you’re used to. Finally, I share some tips for touch typers and I hope that practice will convince you that getting an external keyboard is not a necessity.

Explore Your Keyboard Options

The screenshots below show the default Android 3.x keyboard. Note that this is the German keyboard, i.e. the QWERTZ variant.

This keyboard has nice big keys, but as you can see it is lacking a lot of essential characters and unfortunately, not all of them can be released when pressing the > ?123 key.
You can access the settings of the current keyboard by clicking the tools button in the bottom left area of the keyboard itself. In the above example it’s the key in the very bottom left. If you want to switch to another keyboard layout, click the keyboard symbol in the bottom right of your Android taskbar for a list of installed alternatives.