On my recently-broken Samsung Galaxy S5, one of my colleagues played around with the settings and allowed me to type in pinyin to use traditional Chinese characters, but I can’t figure out how to do it with my new Samsung phone. It seems like you’re restricted to using either simplified/pinyin or traditional/Zhuyin. A Google search tells me that it isn’t possible to use traditional/Zhuyin without using a separate app (like Google Keyboard), which I don’t want to use because you essentially have to consent to being spied on. However, my colleague (whom I’m no longer in touch with) definitely figured out a way to text in traditional characters using pinyin without using a separate app, which I was happily doing for last couple of years. Can anyone here tell me how to get this combination or do you all just use zhuyin for your Chinese texting?
On my Android, I go into “Language & input”, click on “Current Keyboard”, then you can click on “CHOOSE KEYBOARDS” at bottom right and then slide to the right whichever one you want. I use Google Zhuyin, but there is a choice for Google Pinyin input.
Of course, I have an Acer smartphone. Don’t know if Samsung (Korean) has this automatically in software.
As far as I can tell, there’s no “Google Pinyin input” option like what you just described, only the choice between Chinese/simplified (using pinyin), Taiwanese/traditional (using zhuyin) and Hong Kong/traditional (which I thought would use pinyin, but actually seems to use an entirely different system I’m not familiar with).
only other thing to try is under Language & input, click on “Gboard (multilingual typing)”, then click “Languages (English US QWERTY)” and then “ADD KEYBOARD” at bottom, scroll down to Chinese (below Cherokee and Chhattisgarhi) and click on arrow and maybe choose Chinese traditional.
Don’t know anything else that may do it.
Not helpful, but it reminds me: this is part of the reason I invented TOP (tonally orthographic Pinyin) which uses capitals and small letters to show tone – back in the 90s there were no options for character input so we texted in Pinyin. The tone marks were too difficult to input then too.
No good on the Samsung interface, but thanks for trying! 
If you are using a smartphone, then you’re being “spied” on with or without consent.
This is what I use, can even swipe. Don’t need to thumb hunt n peck. I guess you would call it traditional/pinyin.
It’s possible. I was once stuck using simplified characters but one night after I was several beers down I somehow managed to change it to traditional. Unfortunately I have no recollection of how I actually did it.
I keep getting confused by your instructions due to the background pic.
What topic is this?
Gboard has Southern Min now, is that new?
Not really that new, but it is romanization only. No characters, ergo effectively useless.
Noticed that.