Wife's R2D2 issues

[AppliedScience]

Wife has R2D2 version of Droid2, just started having issues whenever using onscreen keyboard. Mainly when using the space bar, the keyboard will retract (for no apparent reason), and has to select txt box again to make it reappear.
Then it started only showing little slivers of the characters she is typing, but say if she sends message, it will show the entire letter typed.
Anyone else experienced this issue and know of best way to troubleshoot a fix to this?
Thanks in advance.

AppliedScience
Sent from my DX using DroidForums

 

[MrCatPC]

Wife has R2D2 version of Droid2, just started having issues whenever using onscreen keyboard... [truncated] ...Anyone else experienced this issue and know of best way to troubleshoot a fix to this?
Thanks in advance. ... AppliedScience ... Sent from my DX using DroidForums

Did you ever get any response to your post, AppliedScience? It sounds to me like a screen-rendering issue with the MTK app, not displaying what it's supposed to on the lower portion of the screen. I wonder if turning off the display animations would help, if that "motion" where the onscreen keyboard sliding into view is causing a problem?

Not necessarily that specific issue on my own R2D2, but I found that onscreen keyboard, using stock Multi-Touch Keyboard (MTK) that was preinstalled, was always buggy until the VZW OTA update to Android 2.3.4, aka 4.5.622 for this model. Now, what I did when I had 2.3.3 was to use a free app called Gingerbread Keyboard, which had another benefit, IMHO, that it also looked like the original Froyo color scheme for the MTK, black keys with light colored fonts on the "key caps." As soon as I shifted the Language/Keyboard Settings to use this Gingerbread Keyboard instead of stock MTK, then *ALL* my on-screen keyboard glitches went away (not kidding!). Here's what I was experiencing:

When using the onscreen MTK in Android 2.3.3 and this R2D2's original 2.2.x OS:

• onscreen keyboard would disappear mid-composition for the stock TXT app.
• predictive text pop-ups would freeze the phone intermittently as I used onscreen keyboard.
• switching from landscape to portrait or back to landscape screen orientation made onscreen keyboard disappear.
• if I used onscreen keyboard to type a website URL, sometimes browser would force close.
• GMail (stock app) composition had same glitches as stock TXT app (per notation above).
• AND when I used the physical sliding QWERTY keyboard on R2D2, sometimes all these issues occurred, too!

So, I did a little experiment, and probably said something about it in another thread here about SMS glitches. I turned off all the predictive text, autocorrect, and word suggestion features for the stock MTK from its settings subpage found within Language/Keyboard Settings, and *most* of the time MTK would then behave. I also tried other things, like clearing browser cache manually, deleting SMS text history, and force-closing apps and background services, but the most consistent results came from adjusting those MTK settings. I went back to using all the word/spelling/predictive features without problems when I installed--and switched default onscreen keyboard preference to--Gingerbread Keyboard. Now that said, you could download any free keyboard substitute app, maybe even SWYPE, just to see if it behaves like a more civilly-mannered astromech when you set something other than the stock MTK to default onscreen keyboard. Of course, YMMV...

OTA 4.5.622 corrected a lot of those glitches since March 2012, but there (as of right now, officially) IS NO GOING BACK to previous versions of Android OS once the VZW OTA update is completely installed. And here we had such good news that Motorola was announcing plans to unlock all the bootloaders, etc., but NO, VZW can't have that. ):K

I happened upon your OP, by the way, while looking up details for a hardware repair: I'm nearly ready to replace a worn-out physical keyboard on my ol' R2D2, parts arrived today! Wish me luck, and I hope your wife's R2D2 isn't still suffering personality issues. I've been living with ONLY the onscreen keyboard (*gasp!*) since my G key and other rubbery keypad letters have begun to separate and fall off the sliding keypad. Quick, smoosh them back on and shut the slider before they all escape!