Keyboard on Samsung tablet

[pat]

Does anyone play on a Samsung tablet, and if so, does your keyboard work? I can bring the keyboard up OK but using it to enter the letters does nothing at all.

[Roddles]

I play on a Samsung Tab A and my wife plays on a Samsung phone. Neither of us uses the keyboard entry option, but I have just done so, and it doesn't work for me either. Strange!

[Alan W]

Pat, after all the work I've done over the years to make Chi play better on an iPad, you're forsaking Apple for Android!

There have been a few previous discussions of touch screen issues, including A touchy problem in 2014 and Playing on an iPad in 2016. As I noted then, it came as a surprise to me that you could play using the virtual keyboard on an iPad. Once it was drawn to my attention that this was possible, and preferred by some players, I introduced the Keyboard button (visible only on touch screens) so people didn't have to resort to tricks to get the keyboard to appear.

However I could never get the keyboard on an Android device to work for playing Chi. Sorry. But I find my Samsung tablet responds very swiftly to tapping the letters on the display.

[Calilasseia]

Interesting. My tablet is an Android device, I'll have to test this sometime ...

[pat]

Pat, after all the work I've done over the years to make Chi play better on an iPad, you're forsaking Apple for Android!

I usually play on my desktop but often use my iPad, which has gradually become slower and slower for everything to the point that I'm going to buy a new tablet. The lag on the keyboard is unbelievable - not just for Chi, although probably worst for Chi - if I hit a wrong letter (i.e. one that's not in the puzzle) it can freeze for ages. I also have a mini Samsung tablet, an S2, which I've mainly used as a photo storage device when I go on my birding trips, rather than take the much heavier laptop. So as I was playing around with the S2 with another trip coming up shortly I decided to nip on to Chi for a bit, which was when I re-discovered that the keyboard doesn't work. Anyway, as the Samsung is miles ahead of the iPad in file management, at least as far as I can see (being a Windows aficionado I know how simple it should be), I've decided to replace the iPad Air with the latest Samsung tablet, the S4. Not only does it have better file management, but you can also increase the storage, as you know. But I guess I'll have to forego using the keyboard on Chi.   I'm sure you needed to know all that! I'm equally sure that there may be others who completely disagree with my reasoning!

I guess the reason that playing without a keyboard in the new puzzle is so much quicker and smoother is that much less activity is going on than in the other puzzles, where the letters have to be moved to the grid.

[pat]

I now have my new tablet, the Samsung S4, and, like the S2, the keyboard doesn't do anything. BUT... if I connect the bluetooth keyboard I can use it. just thought you might like to know, Alan.

[RL]

I play on a samsung phone, it works ok for me
lis

[pat]

I'm finding that playing on the Samsung is worse than on the iPad. I'm sure these are Samsung issues rather than Chi issues, but I can rarely see the whole page on the screen (I play in full screen format). For example, if i get a 'word not known' or 'word already played' message, or if I want to look at the forum latest I have to scroll probably twice the width of the screen to see them. Yesterday I used the orange cross button to remove a letter and the whole screen shrunk to an unreadable size in the top left hand corner. All very odd. And intermittent, as occasionally I get the screen properly presented.

One thing that might not be Samsung's fault though  - I had a five letter word on the rack in the 7-letter puzzle. When I pressed 'Shuffle' the remaining two letters got included.

Update: the shuffle function does the same on the desktop.