From the original Driod to the Bionic - I miss the virtual keyboard and text message

Finally upgraded from the original Driod to the Bionic. I liked the original so much there was no reason to upgrade until the battery died.
So I love it.. and I hate it..

What is with this huge clunky virtual keyboard???! And where is my smiley?? (Although maybe my contacts will be glad it is not so easily accessible).
I have tried a lot of the free keyboards and I am wondering if they are designing these for children. Rainbow colours? All emoticons?? PLEASE someone help me find a clean simple keyboard that is not so HUGE.. and I wouldn't mind if I had my smiley back.. something like the one on the original Droid?

Next issue.. almost the same complaint but with the texting app. I do not want green stars and clouds. I do not want big bars and crowds. I do not like this cartoon app. I want my clean and simple one back! Again, the original Droid texting app has clean lines, compact so you could see more of the conversation or long message.. the app on the Bionic reminds me of MS Comic Chat (boy am I showing my age). Balloons? What were they thinking???

Please recommend some clean, compact apps that do not look like they came with the Sunday funnies.

I have not found a free keyboard, but for around $5.00 I like Swiftky and flex9, swifkey is really good at predicting your next word while Flex has a swiping feature that works real well.

The only sms app I've tried is Gosms, it worked well and I believe there were themes that could be applied to it, so you could make it as simple or dressed up as you wanted. I did notice a little lag, bit I was also running Golauncher at the time.


Sent from my Illudium PU - 36 Explosive Space Modulator.

Hacker keyboard... size options and button options... i dunno about the smiley though

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Madd Catter

Finally upgraded from the original Driod to the Bionic. I liked the original so much there was no reason to upgrade until the battery died.
So I love it.. and I hate it..

What is with this huge clunky virtual keyboard???! And where is my smiley?? (Although maybe my contacts will be glad it is not so easily accessible).
I have tried a lot of the free keyboards and I am wondering if they are designing these for children. Rainbow colours? All emoticons?? PLEASE someone help me find a clean simple keyboard that is not so HUGE.. and I wouldn't mind if I had my smiley back.. something like the one on the original Droid?

Next issue.. almost the same complaint but with the texting app. I do not want green stars and clouds. I do not want big bars and crowds. I do not like this cartoon app. I want my clean and simple one back! Again, the original Droid texting app has clean lines, compact so you could see more of the conversation or long message.. the app on the Bionic reminds me of MS Comic Chat (boy am I showing my age). Balloons? What were they thinking???

Please recommend some clean, compact apps that do not look like they came with the Sunday funnies.

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get eclipse rom or liberty rom and then add the add-on droid x keyboard .. all the crap you listed is gone with the eclipse 2.2 for droid. but with the keyboard add-on swype is disabled for now. BTW smileys are there have to hit app menu key.