Uh oh! HTC’s default keyboard is showing ads

Last year’s HTC 10 was a pretty good smartphone by many accounts. It wasn’t available in South Africa (the company no longer has a local presence), but if you imported it, you might be in for a ridiculously unpleasant surprise.

According to the mildlyinfuriating subreddit, the smartphone’s preinstalled keyboard has started showing an advertisement just above the keyboard itself, making for a rather inconvenient addition, to put it mildly.

The smartphone shipped with the TouchPal keyboard as the default method of text input. So you’ll want to switch to another keyboard to avoid these ads.

But it doesn’t seem like the gremlin is limited to the HTC 10 though, as several users have noted that their HTC U11 is displaying identical behaviour.

The company has called on affected users to uninstall the keyboard — perhaps evidence that the update was pushed without HTC’s approval.

@htc 1 month with my U11, why is my keyboard suddenly showing me banner ads?

— TecnoPaddy (@TecnoPaddy) July 16, 2017

@htc shit ads on my key pad now WTF!!

— carl scruton (@screwy73) July 16, 2017

@htc this TouchPal update sucks. Why in the fuck would you put adds on an app that comes with the phone? My HTC 10 sucks enough as is… pic.twitter.com/4bHwO412Vd

— Bunni Meadow Hopper (@xxmoonbunnixx) July 16, 2017

Please go to Settings>Apps>All apps>Look for the app (TouchPal)>Uninstall updates. For assistance please go to https://t.co/etXmQQWcjL.

— HTC (@htc) July 16, 2017