HTC pledges to fix ‘error’ which saw adverts appear on its smartphone keyboards

4 months ago

Smartphone giant HTC has pledged to “fix the error” that has seen banner adverts appear above the on-screen keyboard on some phones.

The Taiwanese manufacturer’s newest devices come with third-party keyboard app TouchPal loaded on to them and set as the default keyboard.

Many users have taken to social media to report adverts now appearing over the keyboard as they type, something HTC has said appeared in error and it is working to fix.

“Due to an error, some customers are seeing ads on the phone keyboard. We’re working to fix the error and remove these as quickly as possible,” the tech giant tweeted.

Android, the operating system on which HTC’s smartphones run, enables users to download and customise a range of third-party keyboards.

The free version of the TouchPal app does come with adverts, but these are not supposed to appear on HTC devices.

A response to a review on the Google Play app store from TouchPal suggested the issue was related to a problem with its own servers.

“For ads issue, we are preparing the solution from server side now,” the firm said.

“Before server side solution is ready, the ads could be removed by manually uninstalling TouchPal app and then updating from play store again.”