EC Software Consulting, Inc.

Currently in the middle of some interesting discussions on the Android developer forums. At this point, it would seem that the HTC Hero is not capable of catching the long-press menu, which is the default means of bringing up the soft keyboard sans entry fields. Whether the Hero was consciously designed this way or if it is a bug introduced in their version of the Android OS, I don't know.

So....

• For those with an HTC Hero - I recommend that you contact your provider and ask about this feature. Maybe there will be a patch for this if enough people ask.
• If you have a physical keyboard, please use this.
• If your device supports the long-press menu, then you're good to go.

Otherwise, I will be investigating a way to allow you to bring up the soft keyboard from within the application. Unfortunately, this means that the application will need to be targeted to the Android 1.5 release of the OS. I don't know how many people that will affect, but it will shut off the upgrade path for those people until their service providers catch them up.

I welcome your thoughts on this.