While not having the same feeling as the physical keyboard on my old HTC Touch Pro, the on touch screen on the Z is very simple to use. Given the big screen and my fairly small fingers, it is easy to press the right buttons, especially when using the phablet in portrait mode.
There are various keyboard and language related customizations that can be carried out. These settings allow you, amongst others, to change the skin and the layout option of the on screen keyboard and to change the default language. The keyboard settings can be accessed by going to Settings and then choosing Languages & input.
Pressing Languages & input takes you to a sub menu where you can change various other settings:
- Turn spell checker on or off.
- Turn Google voice typing on or off. Clicking this option takes you to another submenu when you can choose to block offensive words and download offline speech recognition. The English offline speech recognition files are downloaded by default (at least mine were already there) and take 22MB of space. However you can choose to download the offline speech recognition files for other languages.
Pressing Xperia keyboard will take you to another submenu:
- Personalization guide: this will allow you to change the keyboard layout.
- Languages: here you will find two different options:
- Writing languages: by default English is selected, but you may choose other languages as well.
- Bilingual word suggestion: this will allow you to select a secondary language so that you can get word suggestions from two languages at the same time.
- Keyboard appearance: here you will find three different options:
- Keyboard layout: allows you to change from three different keyboard layouts.
- Additional keys: Allows you to add the full stop and comma keys and the smiley keys in the keyboard layout, should you wish to do so.
- Keyboard skins: allows you to change from three different skins.
- Text input settings:
- My words: pressing this option will come up with a list of words that you have inputted and accepted but are not present in the dictionary. This will allow you to edit or deleted words in the list.
- Automatic space: checking this option will add a space automatically when a word suggestion is suggested.
- Quick fixes: checking this option will carry out some quick fixes, like for example replace two spaces with full-stop followed by space.
- Word suggestions: pressing this option will allow you to correct misspellings automatically or get word suggestions. Pressing this option will bring the following check list:
- Select the first option if you want to allow your typos to be autocorrected.
- Select the second option if you only want upper case and accented letters automatically.
- Select the third option if you never want to have any letters or words replaced.
- Select the fourth option if you never want any help when writing, not even suggestions.
- Gesture input: this will allow you to write by sliding your finger from letter to letter, lifting it only between words. (To be honest, I have not understood exactly what this option does, even though mine is enabled).
- Space between gestures: this option will allow you to automatically accept the previous word and add a space before the new input gesture.
- Google voice typing key: check this option will allow you to accept voice input from the keyboard.
- Sound and vibrate: pressing this option will bring another sub menu:
- Vibration of keypress: selecting this option should cause vibrations with key presses. To be honest I do not know exactly when these vibrations happen.
- Vibration intensity: pressing this will bring up a slider which will allow you to vary the intensity of the vibrations, provided the above option is enabled.
- Sound of keypress: check this box if you would like to hear a sound with every keypress.
- Sound volume: pressing this will bring up a slider which will allow you to vary the sound volume of the key presses, provided the above option is enabled.
Voice Search: pressing this option will bring a submenu:
- Language: this will allow you to change the default language from English to some other language.
- Speech output: selecting this option will bring another submenu:
- Always: select this option if you want speech output to be available always.
- Informative only: select this option if you just want informative speech output.
- Hands-free only: select this option if you want the speech output to be only available in hands-free mode.
- Block offensive words: selecting this option will allow you to hide offensive voice results.
- Download offline speech recognition. This option will allow you to enable voice input when offline. The English offline speech recognition files are downloaded by default (at least mine were already there) and take 22MB of space. However you can choose to download the offline speech recognition files for other languages.
- Bluetooth headset: Checking this option will allow you to record audio through a Bluetooth headset if available.
Text-to-speech output: selecting this option will bring a submenu:
- Preferred Engine: this allows you to select the text-to-speech engine between Google Text-to-speech engine and Pico TTS engine. In either case, you have the option of selecting the language for the spoken voice from one of the following: English, German, Spanish, French and Italian.
- Speech rate: this allows you to change the speed at which the text is spoken.
- Listen to an example: pressing this would sound few words in the chosen language as an example.
Pointer speed: selecting this option will bring up a slider allowing you to change the speed of the pointer.
