Don’t
be deceived by the flat, low-fidelity look of the on-screen keyboard. A
lot of smarts lurk beneath its surface. The keyboard is laid out in a
traditional QWERTY arrangement, with four rows of keys, and works
whether you hold the phone vertically or horizontally (portrait or
landscape views). The keys are slightly bigger in landscape view, and
some people find typing easier that way. Experiment to see what works
best for you.
As you’ll quickly
discover, the virtual keyboard is something of a chameleon: Depending
on the app and what you’re doing, its lineup of keys changes to make
typing easier. This is most apparent in the bottom row. When you’re
typing an e-mail, for example, you’ll see comma and happy face keys.
But tap the To line, and now you see an @ key and a .com key instead,
since those are more useful for entering recipient addresses.
1. Numbers and Symbols
There’s really not one
keyboard but many. Tap the &123 key to see the phone’s palette of
numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols. Tap the ABCD key to return to
letter land. Curious about that happy face key? That’s your gateway to
emoticon heaven. (The cool thing about the emoticon menu is that it’s
quite international—some of the emoticons are more common in Asian or
European countries than in the U.S.) Both the symbol and emoticon
keyboards feature a More key that shows you yet another keyboard full
of options.
2. Hidden Menus
But wait, as they say,
there’s more! Some keys conceal hidden popup menus, which you can see
by pressing and holding a key for a moment. This is where Microsoft
engineers stashed accents and other diacritical marks, like the Spanish
ñ. Here you’ll also find fractions, mathematical notations, and money
signs. Granted, not everything is the stuff of everyday texting. But
when you need to note the temperature in degrees or communicate what
something costs in euros, it’s comforting to know you can.
Finally,
I want to draw your attention to a pair of hidden menus that can really
save you time. Press and hold the period key to see a selection of
other popular punctuation marks—the ones you see depend on the app or
text box you’re typing in. The .com key, meanwhile, also has common
endings for Internet addresses, which saves you four whole taps.
| Press and hold this key | To type this |
|---|
| A | ä á â à å æ |
| C | ç © |
| E | ë é ê è |
| I | ï í î ì |
| M | µ |
| N | ñ |
| o | ö ó ô ò œ ø |
| s | ß § |
| u | ü ú û ù |
| y | ÿ ý |
| 1 | ½ ⅓ ¼ |
| 2 | ⅔ 2
|
| 3 | ¾ 3
|
| 0 | ° |
| .com | .org, .net, .edu |
| . | Varies |
| ‘ | ’ ‘’ |
| “ | «» “” |
| ? | ¿ |
| - | _ ~ ¬ · |
| ) | ] } > |
| ( | [ { < |
| % | ‰ |
| $ | ¢ £ € ¥ € |
| ! | ¡ |
| ^ | √ |
| < | ≤ |
| > | ≥ |
| + | ± |
| = | ≠ |
| | | ¦ |
