Palm webOS 2.0 Includes A Virtual QWERTY Keyboard

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As it turns out webOS 2.0 does have a software keyboard. That means the earlier reports were indeed accurate. Of course, that is the good news in this bit. Now for the bad, the keyboard is not enabled by default and it seems to be quite buggy as of now.

I guess we can assume that the bugs are the reason it was not enabled by default, or maybe Palm just did not put enough into it to take care of the bugs because they knew it would not get used. Or more accurately, they thought it would not get used. Either way, the keyboard is there, and as a Palm Pre user I must say I am happy and hope to to see some of the bugs worked out in future updates. Personally, with the Pre being a slider style handset, I have more than once tried to type on the screen to realize a keyboard was not going to appear.

That said, according to the details that we have so far, the keyboard can be enabled with some code trickery and a reboot. Not to mention, the implantation is just not there, even once you have it enabled. Once setup the keyboard can be launched either by pressing the Opt+Sym+K keys on the hardware keyboard (not ideal) or by swiping up on the dock. Of course, Palm users will likely recognize that swipe up as the Quick Wave. And yes, that is replaced by the virtual keyboard launch. That makes bit more sense.

With that, the keyboard was noted as being “buggy” and able to work in both portrait and landscape. Well, it was said that it works in landscape “until it crashes.” Given this and given that we have heard plenty about webOS tablet it seems only logical that a more stable virtual keyboard is coming at some point. After all, I am pretty sure Palm and HP are not going to offer a hardware keyboard of any kind and that means a virtual keyboard would then be a requirement.