The Core Dump

The Core Dump is the personal blog of Nic Lindh, a Swedish-American pixel-pusher living in Phoenix, Arizona.

By Nic Lindh on Monday, 14 July 2008

No diacriticals for you and your yuppie toy!

The iPhone keyboard doesn’t support Swedish characters so Nic files a Radar bug.

One of the many great things about iPhone take 2.0 is that it supports the Swedish language, which makes things like sending email to friends and family in Sweden a lot easier.

Except that the Swedish keyboard layout is missing the characters “åäö,” which are part of the language.

No people, it’s not just Mötorhead and Mötley Crüe who use rockdots, they’re part of a language spoken by 9 million people.

There’s a workaround, which is to tap and hold the “a” and “o” characters until a popup with the diacritical marks shows up. Needless to say, that’s suboptimal.

This is annoying enough that I went ahead and created my first Apple Radar report, #6073522:

SUMMARY

The Swedish keyboard in iPhone firmware 2.0 is missing the keys åäö. These letters are part of the Swedish alphabet, and not having them accessible in the keyboard layout makes typing much more inefficient.

The letters can be accessed by holding down the a and o keys until a popup appears with a selection of diacritical marks, but this is a painful way to type.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

Put iPhone to use Swedish keyboard. Notice how åäö do not appear.

EXPECTED RESULTS

The characters åäö should be accessible with the rest of the alphabet keys.

You have thoughts? Comments? Salutations? Send me an email!

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