Japanese Input now built-in in Android
I recently installed the SDK for Android, Google’s OS for mobile phone. I’ve been following that since it was released; I’m pretty attracted by the platform but when I bought my last phone, Android was not really there yet.
One of my requirement is to be able to input Japanese. Currently a Google search about Japanese input will give you mostly links to some third party hack who get you there, but with a clunky interface. Well, I was happy to see in the SDK’s emulator that Android has support for Japanese input built in! You can select it by going to Menu->Settings->Locale & Text.
Now, that doesn’t tell me if I will be able to access it on an Android phone. Sometimes makers and phone operators are known to rip off parts of the OS or add crap for no good reason. If you have an Android phone, I’d love to hear what maker/model it is and whether you do have alternate input methods included.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like this has been released yet – even by Google!
http://www.google.com/phone/static/en_US-nexusone_tech_specs.html
At the bottom you can see there is no Japanese input yet… I wonder if it’s in the code they release? If so you could simply build it and flash the ROM yourself.
Hello
I am using Acer Liquid (Android 1.6). It works fine and Japanese input which is a requirement for me too works like charm with OpenWnn or Simeji applications available from Market.
The other thing that seems weird, is that I can change user interface to French, English, Italian, German but not Japanese. Japanese is included in the locales – so the only answer is that it was just excluded by manufacturer.