After more than a year of training, Apple’s star duo is ready for the Beijing Olympics. The 2.0 Software Update finally brings support for Chinese input to the iPhone and iPod touch, just in time for next month’s opening ceremonies.
To turn on a Chinese keyboard, just launch Settings>General>Keyboard or International. In Keyboard, tap International Keyboards; in International, tap Keyboards. From there, scroll through the available languages and turn on Chinese input. We’re most familiar with Simplified Chinese, but the iPhone supports Traditional Chinese as well. Whichever form you choose, you can activate support for both handwritten characters and Pinyin. With Chinese input turned on, your keyboard will sport a new key with a globe icon; it lets you switch back and forth among any active international keyboards.
The keyboard for handwritten Chinese is actually a blank pad bordered by a handful of useful keys like delete, return, space, and the globe key. To write, just draw characters on the pad and your iPhone or iPod Touch turns them into text. The software dynamically suggests the character it thinks you’re drawing, and displays possible subsequent characters beside the pad. You can cycle through these options and select one with a few taps. Character recognition worked pretty well once we figured out the software likes neat, distinct strokes. Dragging a finger around to draw with one continuous line leads to inaccurate suggestions. Corrections can be frustrating since there’s no way to erase part of a character you’ve drawn – you’ll have to tap delete and try again if your handwriting isn’t up to snuff. We’re seeing more of the delete key than we’d like, but we’re not sure if the 2.0 update or our fingers are to blame.
If you’ve used Pinyin in OS X, you’ll be right at home on the iPhone and iPod touch. Typing Pinyin representations of Chinese words produces a pop-up menu offering four possible characters, and you can either tap the space bar to cycle through them (tapping return to make your selection), or just tap the character you want directly. If there are more than four options, you can cycle or tap to a whole page of characters to select. Thanks to Multi-Touch, Pinyin is faster and feels more natural on the go than in OS X.
No matter which input method you use, entering Chinese text works just as you’d expect in all applications. You can double-tap the spacebar to add a period, and touch and hold to reposition your cursor when writing. Names written in Chinese characters will be auto-completed in apps like Mail and Contacts, and Chinese keyboards grow a Google button when typing in Safari’s search field.
The iPhone may have taken its time meeting China halfway, but it’s gotten there in style. Now there’s no excuse not to write to our Chinese pen pals when we’re out and about, and we couldn’t be happier.
