Galaxy S4: The Missing Manual

Chapter 2. Typing, Texting, and Searching

You’ll learn to:

• Use the two S4 keyboards

• Have your S4 take dictation

• Copy and paste text

• Send and receive text messages

• Search the Web

A SMARTPHONE LIKE THE Galaxy S4 wouldn’t be very smart without the keyboard. Of course, the S4 is great for voice calls, but for text messaging, email, and web surfing, you need an easy way to enter text, and the S4 comes through with flying colors. It gives you two onscreen keyboards—but three ways of entering words into your phone. You can tap to type the usual way, swipe your way through words without lifting your fingertip from the screen, or use the S4’s built-in microphone to speak what you want to type.

Whether you prefer to use your fingers or your voice, this chapter is about all the things the S4 lets you do with text. From basic typing, you move on to editing, text messaging, and chatting. Another important thing you need typing for is searching through all your stuff on the phone, so the chapter finishes off with that.

Note

The S4 offers still two more ways to capture text: handwriting recognition and “scanning” for text with the camera. At this writing, these features are nothing to write home about (no pun intended), but they may improve with future Android updates. If you’d like to give them a try, see The Magic of the Microphone Key for handwriting recognition and The Magic of the Microphone ...