[Chris Marsch]

Living in Europe (Germany) I suppose that the Q10 will first to be released in UK (with QWERTY- Keyboard build in) - would it be possible to switch - via the German localisation - to an QWERTZ-keyboard?

Kindest regards,

Chris

[Branta]

This feature is already in PlayBook OS2.1, I see no reason to think it will be dropped from OS10 phones

[Chris Marsch]

Sounds promising - thx

Chris

[Taigatrommel]

This feature is already in PlayBook OS2.1, I see no reason to think it will be dropped from OS10 phones

The PB has a virtual keyboard though. The Q10 has a physical one. So you can't simply tap a softkey to switch layouts, you'll need to replace the entire hardware KB. I am not sure how easy this will be for the Q10.

[anon(3879737)]

I replaced the housing on my 8520 with some spare parts from China. That also included going from QWERTZ to QWERTY on the hardware side while keeping it set to German on the software side. Otherwise German Umlaute would have been gone. Long story short, you get used to having a slightly "wrong" keyboard. It should be even easier with BB10's multi-language predictive text.

I type this on my PlayBook set to German. Writing English is a pain ...

[ianchristie1972]

It might be possible to modify the Q10 keyboard and swap the Y and Z keys. Supposedly all keys are the same size. However, popping keys off and on might void a warranty also.

[Chris Marsch]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts - I did NOT intend to modify hardware, but was thinking of having an early UK Q10 with QWERTY and running it with German language support, so every time I hit the "Y" the system displays a "Z"...

[Skeevecr]

I would expect that out of the box it will support various keyboard layouts through the options, it is already there for the z10 and their aim is surely to minimise the amount of changes needed for the q10 so removing functionality that was still applicable to the qwerty device seems unlikely.

[Chris Marsch]

thx again to everyone shared an idea - now we have to wait for the release & availability ...

[machoman1337]

Hardware keys send unique signals to the OS. On a desktop OS, where you likely have at least some level of root control, you can force the OS to translate those signals to something different, for example by editing the Windows registry. Possibly the same can be done with rooted Androids that have hardware keyboards.

I really don't know what the situation will be like with the Q10, but I doubt you can just remap the Y key to the Z for example, given that this isn't an OS that allows root access. When they say you can change the language, it probably means you can type German but only in QWERTY mode.

I'd recommend you wait it out for a proper regional release if you want your hardware keyboard to be a specific layout.

[Skeevecr]

Hardware keys send unique signals to the OS. On a desktop OS, where you likely have at least some level of root control, you can force the OS to translate those signals to something different, for example by editing the Windows registry. Possibly the same can be done with rooted Androids that have hardware keyboards.

I really don't know what the situation will be like with the Q10, but I doubt you can just remap the Y key to the Z for example, given that this isn't an OS that allows root access. When they say you can change the language, it probably means you can type German but only in QWERTY mode.

I'd recommend you wait it out for a proper regional release if you want your hardware keyboard to be a specific layout.

While the recommendation to wait is probably a sensible one, only a few weeks difference most likely and much simpler warranty situation, the idea that things like the keyboard layout will be hardwired just simply doesn't make sense, with a number of different layouts needed for the same regional variant they will definitely want a software option so that the only difference between two devices would be the very simply altered keyboard itself.

[SEAWARRIOR]

I type this on my PlayBook set to German. Writing English is a pain ...

ha! while i don't know this first hand, i've been told english is a difficult language,,, it's funny to hear tho...

[PiotrJot]

ha! while i don't know this first hand, i've been told english is a difficult language,,, it's funny to hear tho...

English isn't really difficult. And I know this first hand The spelling can be tricky, but otherwise? Yes: there is lot of tenses, but only few are being used
And if you compare the grammar to German or French: English is fun
(most probably also comparing to other languages: I mentioned only the ones I have some idea about )

EDIT: pardon the OT