[MikLSP]

If you are a new owner of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 you will probably be finding that the performance of the Sony Ericsson keyboard is more than disappointing! As I mentioned HERE the experience with SE's effort is awful and the poorness of it's accuracy is only compounded by the weak auto-correction.
EDIT: since the R2BA02x updates the SE keyboard is greatly improved and no longer misses letters as it originally did. The HTC keyboard is still a great alternative with better auto correction.
 Sony Ericsson Standard.png (28.02K)
Number of downloads: 557 < SE Standard keyboard

So what can you do to improve things? Firstly you can switch to the default Android keyboard by long pressing any text box and choosing Input Method. The response and particularly the auto-correction are improved here but it's still not as good as it could be.
 Android Default.png (34.67K)
Number of downloads: 681 < Android default keyboard

The best solution at the moment then is to install the excellent "HTC Touch Input" keyboard or HTC_IME (input method) as it is also know.
 HTC Touch Input Full.png (64.32K)
Number of downloads: 895 < HTC Touch Input

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I shall now give instructions on exactly how to do that.

1. Firstly you should prepare your X10 for third party software installations:
-Press the MENU key and follow Settings > Applications
-Ensure Unknown Sources is ticked

You will receive a warning when ticking this box and you should of course be careful that you only install software of trusted source

2. Next you should install a file manager which is capable of handling .apk files for installation:
-Download a free file manager from the Android Market such as Astro

Other file managers are available
Alternately you can install apk's directly from your PC with this software

3. Now you can download the HTC keyboard and transfer it to your SD card:
-Attach your phone to the USB cable and, via the "USB Connected" notification, choose Mount for file transfer

You may need to setup the drivers if you haven't already installed the Sony Ericsson software
-Alternately you can remove your SD card and access it through a USB reader

-Download the latest highres version of this modded HTC_IME

All credit goes to jonasl

-Save the zip file to your computer and extract the files HTC_IME_hi.apk & Clicker_hi.apk
-Copy HTC_IME_hi.apk to your chosen location of the SD card

This file installs the HTC Touch Input keyboard

-Copy Clicker_hi.apk to your chosen location of the SD card

This file enables screen calibration and is optional

-Old versions also contain a file called .htcime, copy this to your SD root directory

This file contains setup information for the modded keyboard but is no longer required from v22 onwards

4. You can now disconnect your X10 from the computer and install the apk's:
-Select Turn Off USB Storage from the Android notification bar and press Turn Off
-Open the file manager you installed in step 2 and browse to the location you saved the apk files to.
-Click on HTC_IME_hi.apk and select Open App Manager

The options may vary in different file management apps

-Press Install to begin the installation or Upgrade if installing over an older version
-Follow the installation process as normal then press Done and return to your file manager
-Click on Clicker_hi.apk if you wish to install the calibration tool and follow as above, skip this step if you do not wish to use the calibration

5. The keyboard is now installed but needs to be activated as an input option:
-Press the HOME key then MENU and follow Settings > Locale & Text
-Ensure Touch Input is ticked
-Now long press any text input box and choose Input Method where you will see the new Touch Input option
-Select this and enjoy vastly improved typing on your Xperia X10

Mik

[Poulos]

Thanks

[NL_PD]

Thanx! How do you thingk if there's a way to install the whole HTC Sence homescreen interface?

[MikLSP]

That can't be done at the moment, it will require that the phone gets rooted and then we are able to install custom ROMs. I'm sure that will be a matter of time but be warned that custom ROMs always come with bugs!

[doogyrev]

thanx

[BrightSpark]

i installed the htc hero keyboard on my dext. personally, i think it's total carp. it's not very well designed - for example, on the numeric keypad, the spelling suggestions(which can't be switched off) covers up what i'm writing. after using it for a few hours, i found it HIGHLY infuriating due to it's poor design . uninstalled

[MikLSP]

BrightSpark, on 19 April 2010 - 01:20 AM, said:

i installed the htc hero keyboard on my dext. personally, i think it's total carp. it's not very well designed - for example, on the numeric keypad, the spelling suggestions(which can't be switched off) covers up what i'm writing. after using it for a few hours, i found it HIGHLY infuriating due to it's poor design . uninstalled

Everyone else seems to get on well with it but then again maybe they're all just more +ve about things.

Firstly why use the alpha numeric keypad when they qwerty works SO well with virtually flawless auto correction!?

Secondly to turn of word suggestions go to Touch Input settings > Text Input and untick Spell Correction & Word Completion under the Phone Keypad section, then turn off T9 on the keypad itself.

Thirdly the word suggestions only appear while entering that word, at that time the spelling of the word is all you need to see and once entered it disappears to show the whole text fully anyway and hence is not a problem in any way!

Finally, you have a hardware keyboard, perhaps that should be your main text input so there will be no on screen issues for you.

[BrightSpark]

MikLSP, on 19 April 2010 - 12:10 PM, said:

Firstly why use the alpha numeric keypad when they qwerty works SO well with virtually flawless auto correction!?

because i HATE qwerty with a passion. the only reason why i installed it in the first place is because it's my only option to getting a numeric keypad. but when they numeric keypad is total rubbish, then it has no use

Quote

Secondly to turn of word suggestions go to Touch Input settings > Text Input and untick Spell Correction & Word Completion under the Phone Keypad section, then turn off T9 on the keypad itself.

been there done that. doesn't work

Quote

Finally, you have a hardware keyboard, perhaps that should be your main text input so there will be no on screen issues for you.

that's even worse than the virtual qwerty. it's very uncomfortable to type with. i have to type with my fingernails because the keys are so close together. when i use the tips of my fingers, i hit more than 1 key every 3 or 4 letters.

This post has been edited by BrightSpark: 20 April 2010 - 02:29 AM

[MikLSP]

Quote

because i HATE qwerty with a passion. the only reason why i installed it in the first place is because it's my only option to getting a numeric keypad. but when they numeric keypad is total rubbish, then it has no use

But you HATE everything with a passion!
Anyway, was this not a consideration when choosing the qwerty only DEXT?!

Quote

been there done that. doesn't work

But it DOES work, I even tested it before posting! Again, would you like a video to prove this?!
Why is it that everything I post doesn't work for you?

Quote

that's even worse than the virtual qwerty. it's very uncomfortable to type with. i have to type with my fingernails because the keys are so close together. when i use the tips of my fingers, i hit more than 1 key every 3 or 4 letters.

So what you're saying is that you bought a crap handset.....

[BrightSpark]

MikLSP, on 20 April 2010 - 10:18 AM, said:

But you HATE everything with a passion!
Anyway, was this not a consideration when choosing the qwerty only DEXT?!
it was the best phone i could get for the cheapest possible price

But it DOES work, I even tested it before posting! Again, would you like a video to prove this?!
Why is it that everything I post doesn't work for you?
because you don't know what you're talking about j/k.
seriously, i want t9 but i don't want all the spelling suggestions that cover up what i'm writing. i can assure you that the above method that you suggest still shows the suggestions covering up what i've written

So what you're saying is that you bought a crap handset.....
no

[MikLSP]

The method I suggested does require that T9 be turned off as it mentions. If you need T9 on then yes the suggestions still appear but they are actually very useful.

I must say though that the suggestions hardly cover any of my text at all, in fact the suggestion box doesn't even fully cover the bottom line of an "L"....though this may well be thanks to my higher resolution screen.
Even if they do obscure the text beneath, they are useful and are actually buttons to aid text input. Words are suggested before you finish typing them and can make entering long words much quicker. Once the word is entered the suggestion disappears and you can see whatever is written.

[BrightSpark]

it does cover the text completely on mine. perhaps it's worthwhile mentioning that it's the keyboard taken from the hero.

[MikLSP]

I'm using the keyboard linked to in this tutorial which is a modified version of the Hero keyboard. The difference in how much of the text is covered is likely due to screen resolution.
Surely though you can accept that the suggestions are useful while typing that word and you can see the rest of the text once it is entered. There's no reason to need to see the rest of your text in the middle of an individual word.

[BrightSpark]

MikLSP, on 20 April 2010 - 03:50 PM, said:

I'm using the keyboard linked to in this tutorial which is a modified version of the Hero keyboard. The difference in how much of the text is covered is likely due to screen resolution.
Surely though you can accept that the suggestions are useful while typing that word and you can see the rest of the text once it is entered. There's no reason to need to see the rest of your text in the middle of an individual word.

you may well be right about the screen resolution difference being the culprit. the hero and the dext have the same resolution, both of which is considerably less than the x10.

i went back to the standard android keyboard on the dext. i'm not very trusting of things on the internet, so the hero keyboard may well have a keylogger on it. that's another thing that puts me off using it.

[MikLSP]

Tutorial updated for latest version of the keyboard

Mik

[tahonen]

As an update for former versions, I would appreciate to have Finnish inf language selection, even tho, swedish might work pretty good. I haven't tested it in use yet, but the keyboard itself looks pretty good, thanks for that.

Regards,
Toni
from Finland

[MikLSP]

I'm afraid I am not involved in the development of this keyboard, this is just a tutorial on how to install it. The work is done by jonasl at xda-developers (and HTC of course)

[thelastwhitetiger]

I'm afraid I'm not 'tech savvy and don't know what you mean by "Your chosen folder for your SD card" or whatever it was :S I tried going Explore on the Start menu of my computer hoping there was some folder that said SD card but there wasn't -- so I don't know exactly where I'm supposed to install those files and I don't want to anything up

Also if it does something to mess things up, is it easy to delete?

[MikLSP]

When you connect your phone to the USB cable you will receive a notification on the phone screen, follow step 3 at this point.

Once you can view your phone as a removable drive open it and that is the SD card. "Your chosen location" means anywhere you want on there, just somewhere you know you can find again when using the file manager on the phone itself.

You can't do much wrong here, putting a file on the SD card does nothing more than that. Even if you lose it the worst it will do is take up a tiny bit of your storage space.
Once you come to installing it, again there's nothing that can go wrong really. It installs as an app and can be removed as one too.

[Wunderbar]

Thank you so much for posting this info and where to find the files. I am a relatively new X10 user and I love the way the keyboard looks and it's usability is so much better.

I had a question though - there is a voice icon on the keyboard but when I press it nothing happens. My settings for voice appear to be correct (Show voice button is set to For English. Has anyone else experienced this and did you get it working?

I do have the google voice search apk installed and I know that works (I use it in the updated Google Maps without any problems). Do I require some other voice recognition apk?

Thanks a bunch!