How to Type Faster On An Android Feature Phone

New Old Phone

I have been eyeing for an Android feature phone for some time. I finally caved and bought a refurbished LG Smart Folder (2017) that runs on Android 7.

Typing is a Pain

There is a tiny on-screen keyboard, but what is the fun of getting a phone with a keypad if I don’t use it? It’s exciting to have a flip phone with a keypad and supports Android. I installed my essential apps like Whatsapp, Instagram, Discord, Waze and Touch N Go eWallet, but typing was a pain. If I wanted to type “can”, I would need to click on 2 three times to get C then wait until the cursor appear and click 2 again to get aand 6 twice to get n . I vaguely recall there was a time when there are some sorts of predictive text where I can just press 226 and the algorithm magic will output a few word selections.

Google Is Your Best Friend

After various keyword search, I stumbled upon this Reddit post where someone posted their work on predictive text for T9 keypad called K9T9. Bless their soul!

Predictive Text On T9 Keyboards!

From the README.md, we see that we need adb to install the keyboard but I figured I will write a detailed instruction on how to install from start till the end.

Unlike downloading and installing the .apk directly into the phone, we need Android Debug Bridge (adb) working on our computer. I followed this step-by-step guide to get adb on my computer:

Step 1: Enable USB Debugging Mode on Your Android Phone

1. On your Android Phone, go to Settings > About Phone > Build Number.
2. Tap on Build Number 7 times until you see the toast message where Developer Options are available.
3. Go back to the Settings menu, you should see Developer Options now, tap into it.
4. Scroll for USB Debugging and enable that.

Step 2: Installing adb on your computer

1. Download the Android SDK Platform Tools ZIP file for Windows. For other operating systems, kindly refer to this guide.
2. Extract the contents of this ZIP file into a folder.
3. You should see adb in the list when you check the folder using File Explorer.
4. Type cmd in your address bar to open the terminal where we will use later. The path should point to the folder where you extracted your files to.

Step 3: Installing K9T9 on your phone

1. Download the latest release of K9T9 and move the file to the same folder where you extract the ZIP file.
2. Connect your phone to your PC. There should be a trust computer message pop up on your phone if it’s your first time connecting. Authorize your computer if needed.
3. At the terminal, you’ve opened earlier, type adb devices and you should see your phone listed. If it is not listed, you need to plug in again until you see your device listed.
4. Follow the official Installation instructions:

Install via ADB:

adb install <release>.apk

Set K9T9 as the active IME:

adb shell ime set com.shortendesign.k9keyboard/.K9InputMethodServiceImpl

On first run after install, K9T9 may take some time to load the word database and populate its data structures. During this time, the word input modes will not work.

1. In your terminal, run adb instal 0.12.0.apk to install the keyboard on your phone. You should see the following messages Performing Streamed Install and then Success when it is done. NOTE: Change 0.12.0 to the release version you downloaded.
2. Run adb shell ime set com.shortendesign.k9keyboard/.K9npurethodServiceImpl to set K9T9 as the active IME. If it is successful, you should see Input method com.shortendesign.k9keyboard/.K9InputMethodServiceImpl selected
3. You’re done. Now wait for a while and then try typing on your phone!

Thoughts

As a Malaysian with a lot of native slangs, I had to write proper English in order for the predictive text to guess correctly. At the time of writing, there is no way to add words to the library where it is only in English, I have to long press pound (#) sign to switch between modes. So far, I am loving it as I can now type much faster on my device.