keyboard unusably slow on Android

[AevaOnline]

I have tried to use the keyboard from an Android 4.0 tablet and a 4.1 phone, and on both it is unusably slow. Keys do not respond to touch, but must be "held" for a second or two before being registered.

[Mottie]

Hi devananda!

It's difficult for me to test this since all I own an Android phone running v2.3.5. Is it possible that another app might be interfering?

[AevaOnline]

That is always possible.... FWIW, I've tried killing other apps, rebooting, and disabling non-standard keyboards (eg swiftkey). None of these produced any improvement in responsiveness. I will ask a few friends with android 4.0 / 4.1 devices to check and compare performance.

[TheGr8]

I had exactly the same problem, even did a hard-reset on the tablet to make sure nothing interferes. That didn't help. What worked for me is using MK with mobile extension. Unfortunately there are 2 minor issues I am still having:

1. Slight lag while switching between the fields - tapping on the next field and it takes almost a second to switch the focus.
2. Occasionally the keys get "stuck", see the letter "O" on the screenshot - http://www.shareimages.com/image.php?61956-p5GbmZGcm6eilqeY-android.jpg

[TheGr8]

I ended up scratching Mottie Keyboard and trying a couple of other ones. I kept having the same issue. Apparently, there's a 300ms delay on mobile platforms between the actual tap on the screen and firing of the "click" event.
Here's something that may help other people:

https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick

this library "converts" click events to "touchstart" events.

[Mottie]

Please try out the latest version. It now builds a keyboard only once per layout, adds and removes the keyboard from the DOM and memory when not visible.

[Mottie]

I'm guessing this issue has been resolved, so I'm going to close it. If you continue to have problems, please feel free to continue this discussion.