Galaxy S II: The Missing Manual

Using the Android Keyboard

TAP WHEREVER YOU CAN enter text, and the keyboard appears. When you first tap in the text-entry box, a blinking cursor appears, indicating that you can start typing text. When you tap a key, a kind of “speech balloon” pops up just above your finger, showing you a larger version of the letter you’ve just tapped.

Surrounding the letters are six special keys:

• Shift . Tap this key, and the letters all change to uppercase on the keyboard. Tap any key, and it gets entered in uppercase. After you type the key, though, the keyboard changes back to lowercase. There’s a way to lock the Shift key so you can type multiple capital letters in a row, though. When the keyboard is displaying uppercase letters, tap the Shift key. The little dot on the upper left of the Shift key turns green to show that the keyboard is now locked in Shift mode. Press the Shift key again, and the dot turns gray, and you’re back to the lowercase keyboard.

• Del . This is the Delete key. Mac fans will feel right at home with it, since it deletes letters to the left of the insertion point, like a Backspace key. If you use a PC, where the Delete key is a forward delete key, you may find this behavior confusing ...