Samsung Galaxy Devices and External Keyboards

Once I got such a capable device as the Galaxy Note series, I was very interested in learning how to "go light" with my device and use an external keyboard.  After connecting my keyboard to my tablet, the pain began and I was constantly fighting with my tablet's soft-keyboard appearing. 

I googled and searched and a temporary solution was to install an "invisible keyboard" that I would switch to after connecting my keyboard.  This worked until Iet my keyboard go to sleep.  As soon as it would wake up, Samsung would pop-up their message that I needed to use their keyboard and then it would switch me to their keyboard and I would again either have to struggle with hidding their keyboard each time it popped up or take a moment to switch IMEs to the "invisible keyboard."

Well, the solution was there all along; however, it was not really obvious.  Sammy actually did make allowance for using an external keyboard, but you only can access the setting once you connect the keyboard (it is remembered though).  Steps to make this change are:

1.  Connect your keyboard.
2.  Change the "hidden setting" from either the notification menu or the device settings:
     A.  Notification Pull Down:  Click on 'select input method'
     B.  Device Settings:  Select 'Controls' tab, then 'Language and Input'.  Under "Keyboards and Input Methods", click on 'default'
3.  Turn switch of for "Use On Screen Keyboard".

That is it!  Now your softkeyboard will not appear when your external keyboard is present and active.

RANT:  This was really "stupid" of Sammy because of positioning of the setting and the way it is named.  Since it is NOT in an area for "external keyboards" and is right above a list of the devices soft keyboard, it is easy to assume that turning off the setting will prevent the soft keyboard from appearing ALL THE TIME.

Sammy, if you are listening:  Please fix this and move the setting under a specific category for external keyboards... much as external mouse has a setting category.

From the trenches....

Android from a first-time rooter

Android is my preferred mobile platform now that Palm has died... and the Nokia n900 is dead... HP WebOS died... and Ubuntu Touch has yet to become a valid player (hope it does).  Apple was never an option for me because I disagreed with many of their policies and I found it was too locked down to make me comfortable... and well... I naturally dislike being mainstream. :)  So, I am presently an Android user and I do enjoy it a lot of the time... and I am also a Samsung user.  I love the note series of products and I have had the Note 1, Note 3, and Note 10.1 2014 tablets.

At the same time, I have found that I hate some aspects of the Samsung products... most notably the capacitive buttons on my devices and especially on my Note 10.1 2014.  I was all the time hitting the capacitive buttons when holding in portrait mode and pulling up search or some other samsung program I did not want...  AND on my phone, the inability for the home screen to rotate (Samsung's choice in TouchWiz).

Thank God for ROOTing.  I recently got the courage up to Root my tablet and my Note 3.  I am very glad that I have on both cases because there are a couple of apps that totally make it worth while to root your phone for.  I have been able to do the following with my phone and tablet and glad that I did.

-  Disable the Menu and the Back Keys:  This is done through a simple edit of the keyboard layout file.  Xda developer's forum has many posts on how to accomplish this.  Before doing that; however, I enabled the soft navigation buttons so I could have access to the capacitive key functions that I disabled.  I actually decided against using the on-screen navigation bar because it had other side effects with my stock TouchWiz ROM and resorted instead to a nifty application called LMT (also on xda-developers site).  Most notable was some regions were covered by the bar or caused the search/app tray icons to be pushed up and into other icons.  Using xposed mod for immersive display fixed the crowding, but caused issues with multi-window scaling with the divider between apps button being off position some.

-  Installed GMT Guesture Lite for easier navigation.  This is great once your get used to using multitouch guestures.

After my tweaking my tablet is much more to my liking on 4.4.2 KitKat
> No capacitive Buttons to mess with my work flow.
> LMT for standard naviation (swipe in to access Back, Menu, Recents, Home, and Notification Pull down).  I also use the "Pointer" feature on my phone and it is a God Send for one-handed navigation!!!  Can't imagine life without now days on a large phone phablet.  Use this on my left and right borders.
> GMT Guesture Lite for easy navigation.  4-finger swipe previous/next app, 3-finger swipe down for back, 3-finger swipe up for recents, 4-finger pinch for "home", 4-finger expand for "recents popup", 5-finger twist for "screen off", and other custom guestures of your own design.  Love it!
> Home2 Shortcut for a double press custom use of the home key (left that active as I rarely had issues with hitting home key accidently).
> Swipe Home Button:  I used this initially because it doesn't require root.  I still use it on my tablet but have stopped using on my phone.

On my phone is using Lollipop and I use the same except for Swipe Home Button.  LMT is configured for the bottom edge activation and I configured the pie slides to mirror with two rows active.  That way the motion is the same left or right handed and everything is within reach of my short thumb.  I also configured the top row to activate the pointer so sliding up and all the way through gives me the pointer for "reaching out" and touching the rest of my screen (except for the notification bar).

If you intend to go down this road, the only advice I would say is "backup backup backup" any file you intend to modify or "delete".  It is easy to forget what changes you made and it is also easy to delete what you think is bloat ware only discover it has other tie-ins with your android device that causes errors.