It looks like there’s at least one hidden feature in webOS 2.0 which HP and Palm haven’t publicized: An on-screen keyboard. Right now every smartphone that runs webOS has a physical keyboard, making an on-screen keyboard somewhat unnecessary (although that hasn’t stopped some people from hacking together their own for use in landscape mode). But now it looks like webOS 2.0 does indeed have an on-screen keyboard which could be useful for touchscreen-only smartphones. It will also likely be essential for the upcoming line of tablets, printers, and other touch-only webOS devices HP is expected to launch.
The keyboard isn’t enabled out of the box. But a member of the WebOS Internals team figured out how to modify one 0f the configuration files in webOS 2.0 to bring up the keyboard.
You can check out a video of the webOS 2.0 keyboard in action after the break and find more details at PreCentral. Note that while the video says you can only bring up the keyboard by using the physical keyboard, you can actually trigger it by using the “Quick Wave” swipe action (slowly swipe your finger halfway up the screen of your phone).
