If you have been eying the new Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade for Android, but aren’t sure if/when it will come to your device then this may serve as at least a bit of good news. One part of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, the keyboard, is now available for Android 2.2 and greater devices via a port that’s available in the Android Market.
The new keyboard features a slightly different color scheme, with the keyboard being a darker shade of grey and the predictive text appearing in blue, instead of the previous green. You can also now click the underlined (with three dots) predictive word to get a list of more options. The keyboard settings also contain some additional options.
If you haven’t previously installed a custom keyboard on your Android then there are a couple of tricks you need to understand. The keyboard doesn’t automatically become your default and it doesn’t appear in your installed apps. To enable it, you will need to go to your device settings and click “Language and Keyboard”. Click to enable the “Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard”, and then go to “Input Method” and choose the “Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard”.
You can download the new keyboard from the Android Market Place. Below is a great video tutorial posted by the folks at SmartKeitai.com.