Keyboard app recommendation
Dave-in-Decatur
Specialist - Level 2

The standard Android keyboards don't do non-Roman languages, which I need for some of my work, so I've looked into keyboard apps in Google Play. For several months I used GO Keyboard, which is quite good; but recently it began pushing a large number of ads (see this thread). I went looking again, and found Smart Keyboard, which has a free trial (fully functional, nag screen, but no ads) and an ad-free, nag-free paid version ($2.65 as of this date). Here's a short review for those who may be interested:

Smart Keyboard is highly customizable, with many options for appearance and functionality, including layout (normal, T9, compact); transparency; adding or removing a domain key (.com, etc.), mic key, and others; resizing keys; skins; etc. The multilingual functions are easy to use and customize. Two of my favorite features: (1) You can use text prediction/autotext and non-Roman keyboards on a physical keyboard if your phone is so equipped (switching languages with Shift+Space). (2) Long-pressing a key on the virtual keyboard inserts the alt character, e.g., long-pressing a inserts @, d inserts $; this saves a lot of switching to the symbol keyboard! There are a couple of things that could be improved: (1) add a key to take the virtual keyboard off the screen; (2) the Hebrew keyboard layout is very odd, unlike any I've ever seen, nonintuitive and hard to get used to. Overall, though, I recommend it very highly. If you can deal with the buy-me nag screens on occasion, the trial version works great. I think it's well worth the $2.65, though, especially if you have professional needs for non-Roman languages.

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