How to stop the android soft keyboard from ever coming up in my entire application

Question

I'm developing an application on a hardware device that has a built-in hardware keyboard that does not slide out so is always visible (like a blackberry). Therefore, I NEVER want the soft keyboard to display for my entire application. I'm aware of another SO question that gives the following lines of code:

InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager)getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(myEditText.getWindowToken(), 0);

But I don't know where to put this code to hide the soft keyboard in all places where it might possibly appear in my Activity. I have tried adding the code to Activity.onUserInteraction to no avail. It seems the keyboard appears after the onUserInteraction executes.

I also tried adding the following to my <Activity>:

<activity 
    android:windowSoftInputMode="stateAlwaysHidden"
>

Soft keyboard still appears.

Answer 1

Your application should not do anything. The device's firmware should contain a configuration that inhibits the soft keyboard based on the hardware keyboard being visible, just like every other Android device that has a hardware keyboard. If that is not happening, talk to the hardware maker and see if they are planning on addressing this.

Answer 2

An easy workaround for tomorrow presentation:

I would create a new IME with an empty view. Here are two openSource projects for you to look at some code.

• GreekIME at googlecode
• softkeyboard at googlecode

If you want to know more about input methods, go to Creating an input method.