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It seems as the default keyboard is removed from several Android devices. I have two, a Sony Xperia (4.0.4) and a Samsung Galaxy SIII (4.0.4) and neither of them has the default Android keyboard (or I'm missing something).

Is there an official way of installing the default keyboard? (And why would hardware makers disable the default keyboard?)

This is related to my other question Switch to another keyboard language using stock keyboard

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  • What is the name of the keyboard installed on these devices? Is there just one keyboard installed?
    – MrWhite
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 2:18
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    Xperia Chinese keyboard, Xperia Japanese keyboard, Xperia keyboard. I left the Samsung home today but I believe it just has a few "Samsung keyboard"s.
    – Jonny
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 2:30
  • I found this. theandroidsoul.com/… The funny thing about this is it does not seem official at all, because the keyboard file is hosted on Dropbox. I can't trust that.
    – Jonny
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 3:08
  • I had a similar problem a while back trying to find the default Android spelling dictionaries (for English!) that appeared to be missing from my device. I could not find an official source for those either.
    – MrWhite
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 8:34

2 Answers 2

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There's no official way of installing the default keyboard if it's not installed by the manufacturer.

However, there may be unofficial ways using files stripped from other devices or compiled from AOSP. There are some keyboards on Google play, see for example Keyboard from Android 2.3, which claims to be like the default keyboard from Android 2.3.

Another way of getting the default keyboard may be installing another ROM.

I think hardware makers would install their own keyboards if they think that they are superior to the default one, for example because they better work on the screen size of a device.

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    This would mean that the manufacturer changed the keyboards in a way they thought would be better for their audience. In my case it seems to be for the worse. I won't install 3rd party keyboards (what a bad out of the box experience). I highly suspect that they will not be better than stock Android keyboards that supposedly would target most languages seeing as Android is anywhere. I don't think a 3rd party developer could take on that task without a big amount of resources - even the manufacturers have failed. I'll just give up on Android keyboards.
    – Jonny
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 9:22
  • Well you should definitely check out some 3rd party keyboards, there are some which are really cool and superior to the stock keyboards in many ways. See for example Swift Key.
    – Bob
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 9:58
  • It's probably great but I need Japanese as well.
    – Jonny
    Commented Mar 7, 2013 at 0:41
  • Needing Russian on a Samsung Galaxy S from another region, because of the lack of original Android keyboard, I chose to install AnySoftKeyboard (which is also available on F-Droid, which guarantees it is free/open-source, can be rebuilt from sources, and has been inspected by more people for not having spying features).
    – imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev
    Commented Apr 20, 2013 at 14:32
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Yes, you can now install the stock Android keyboard from the Play Store - it's called Google Keyboard.

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    You could at least offer a link.
    – ale
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 1:10
  • Here it is play.google.com/store/apps/… It seems that it still only contains English but is supposed to come for other languages later.
    – Jonny
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 1:40
  • I get "This app is incompatible with your KDDI Sony SOL21.", also "This item cannot be installed in your device's country"... damn it!!1
    – Jonny
    Commented Jun 11, 2013 at 3:00

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