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Help Phone upgrade: will we lose accurate cursor control?

davoid

Android Expert
Aug 3, 2011
1,801
712
London
As somebody one these forums already mentioned, all the new phones seem to come without a trackpad. Only this morning I was using my Desire to edit a word document in Docs to Go, and I consciously appreciated the ability to navigate within the document with the trackpad, and it made me wonder whether I should keep hold of the Desire just because of this particular functionality, as I value it highly.

But I would sorely love to sample some quad core goodness at some point.

I'm wondering why the android keyboard doesn't have cursor arrows incorporated, as they are conspicuous by their absence.

It would be great if google devs incorporated this fundamental functionality into the primary text input interface, but how likely is it that they would listen to user requests for such a feature? (I know that for 2 years users have been pleading for google to add a bookmarks sidebar to Chrome, to no avail... not even a response, that I can find)

Maybe with larger screens, it would be easier to accurately place the cursor with the tip of the finger, but I'm not convinced.
 
I've found a keyboard app with cursor controls called Arrows Keyboard for $0.99 but it doesn't look great. I don't like the displaced bottom row of keys with the z below the shift key instead of the s key.

Arrows Keyboard | AppBrain Android Market

A much more elegant solution would be to use gestures - swipe up for cursor up; swipe down for cursor down, etc.

But Arrows Keyboard might be better than nothing...
 
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I now have an Xperia S, and i do miss the track pad. :(

You could try Perfect Keyboard. It seems to have quite comprehensive features, and has a setting so you can swipe up on the space bar and the keyboard shifts up one row and four arrow keys appear at the bottom. Swipe down again on the space bar and they disappear.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=free.inputmethod.latin.perfectkeyboard&feature=more_from_developer&rdid=free.inputmethod.latin.perfectkeyboard&rdot=1

Ah. Now I can start thinking about that upgrade.
 
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