Android Japanese Input

Since I was asked by comrade Shun to describe how to write japanese on android devices I will show you today how you can do this without that much effort.

First off, I know of two apps for android with which you can write in japanese kana and kanji.
MultiLing Keyboard and Simeji. Both work the same way but they have different features and handling.

If you hit your text input box and keep pressing for a while you get an extra button to modify your input options.
Sorry that I have german pictures but I am from Germany and therefore my phone is on german settings. But I think you will know what you need to press.

If you did it the right way you get a submenu with your different input options you have enabled in your options beforehand. Just choose either MultiLing or Simeji to get your seperate software keyboard.

The first to introduce would be MultiLing Keyboard together with a handwriting plugin. Yes, thats right, you can use your touchscreen to write the symbols yourself and have the software recognize what you just wrote.
The app is able to read your writings fairly good and it can be useful but in my opinion the handling is really bad and I would stick with the normal mode.

One gets ten buttons with the A-row of each hiragana syllable. If you hit it once you get the showing one into your text field. But what about the other ones you might ask? Well that is an easy question to answer. If you push the button a bit longer you get an additional menu showing the other hiragana syllables from the specific type. In this example the あ[a], い [i], う [u], え [e] and お [o] hiragana. Starting from the left going clockwise it is always this order. You just need to move a bit to the wanted hiragana.

For each hiragana or katakana you write, the app shows you some example words which you might wanted to write. If you find the correct word just tap it and it’s done.

Next we have Simeji. It is build the same way but doesn’t has a handwriting input mode. But if you purchase the premium version you can connect it to different japanese applications like the Kanji Recognizer which seems to be a really good partnership, since I love the Kanji Recognizer app.

The order of the seperate kana is the same as with MultiLing and the handling seems to be the same. But in my opinion Simeji works a bit better with word prediction.
If you need a small つ or ツ [tsu] to double the next consonant you just tap the button for  the dakuten, the ゛ or ゜ some of the kanas have to change the sound of a kana. If it is a つ or ツ [tsu], either hiragana or katakana it wont add any kind of dakuten but it will simply shrink the っッ.

So far, that is the only way I know to write in japanese on an android device. Android is getting more and more of the iPhone cake in Japan as well now and I think in the future Android phones will have integrated japanese input too.

I would love to have a phone with the same way to write japanese like I have with my windows notebook. It seems more natural that way and it is way faster but I think the programmer of MultiLing and Simeji did a fairly good job with their apps.

UPDATE

I forgot to switch back my input mode and tried to write with my hardware keyboard and I saw that I can use my hardware keyboard to write japanese just like the one at my notebook. No tapping and sliding on the screen to write japanese but rather write the syllables with each letter of it and I still get word predictions which I can then tap.

Really awesome advantage of a smartphone with hardware keyboard! Now this is an even greater benefit of the Desire Z compared to the Desire HD