Root-free Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard available for Android 2.2 and higher

When we published our Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Preview, we included some pictures of the virtual keyboard and mentioned that it sports better error correction and spell checking. For those of you that are looking forward to trying Ice Cream Sandwich’s new native keyboard, but know you may have a while to wait until an update becomes available for your device, you can now download the keyboard in the Android Market and use it with all devices that have Android 2.2 and above.

Using the Ice Cream Sandwich source code that was released a few weeks ago, a user on XDA Developers, named for.digit, has ported the Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard over. The keyboard is available for free and does not require the device to be rooted.

The feature list includes:

• Multitouch keyboard
• User dictionary, built-in dictionary
• Configurable auto correction
• Redesigned and optimized keyboard layout and style
• Speech to text (select languages only)
• Custom vibration intensity (haptic feedback)
• Long press "Enter" key to bring up smiley alternatives
• Long press on "/" key in URL mode to bring up domains

The developer cautions that it is in beta therefore some bugs are expected. While it currently has mostly good reviews, a number of users with HTC devices are reporting issues with the keyboard.

Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard [Android Market link]

source: XDA Developers via Android and Me