[Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note II] ambress:
Oversized Keypad Problem - Resolved by Factory Reset/Default Install

Hi All,

First of all, big kudos to Josh as well as all others contributing their talents on this ROM. Compared to various ROMs I flashed on my Epic 4G, where a daily reboot by battery removal nearly became a norm, the Jellybomb ROM has been very stable and solid with perhaps only a handful of occasions where I've had to pull the battery. Can't even remember why now.

I have only one big criticisms of the JB ROM, the blue keyboard which I personally found very difficult to read and thus reverted to the Stock Samsung Keyboard. To each his own, but I think the decision to use a themed keyboard actually hinders usability. Such criticism is largely moot however, given that there is an option provided in the installer to change keyboards.

Frankly, I use the phone more for web access than telephone use, so perhaps the oversized keypad issue that ruzario was already in existence on my phone. However, I didn't really stumble upon seeing that same thing until after I decided to try out the 240 dpi mod. Once discovering that I didn't like the mod due to so much small text and not all font size tweaks resolving my concerns, I reverted to the stock dpi mod yet the oversized keypad issue persisted. So, if the 240 dpi mod triggered the problem, it couldn't be resolved by returning to the stock dpi mod.

After first observing my dislike of the blue keyboard, I started doing all subsequent JB11 installs as custom installs, only to find that usually resulted in a problem with the stock keyboard. So, I went forward with all other customizations, rebooted, allowed the phone to fully boot, then rebooted and appied only the keyboard mod. I also moved on with installing all other apps of interested from Google Play, yet without watching for whether any of them might have introduced the keypad issue. Another oddball problem I observed was that I couldn't disable any of the Quick Panel widgets...at best, I could only move the ones of no interest to the bottom of the list so that those of no interest would be off the home page.

After making a TB and TWRP backup, I finally decided to reinstall JB11 in hopes of resolving the oversized phone keypad. A System Wipe followed by a custom reinstall didn't resolve anything. Options used in the customization were: 50% Clear menu dropdown and status bar widgets, ICS slider, restored AllShare and AccuWeather, and - indirectly - a restoration of the stock keyboard in the manner I described earlier. That still failed to resolve the oversized keyboard, so ultimatelyl I did a factory wipe, reinsalled JB11 per the default opotins, booted the phone, and after all was good to go, I reboorted to recovery and applied the desired mods, including stock keyboard just to see if it would "take" on this try. All mods did in fact install without a hitch and the oversized keypad was no more, plus the Quick Panel options would now hide all disabled widgets.

Oh, and one last thing...while I've never found the JB Tether to work, it did once I reinstalled BusyBox and the TrevE Tether. I've not tried out the encrypted tether, but at least a non-encrypted tether with device control enabled does work without any issues.

Regards,

Ambress