Digital/Physical keyboard not sending input on occasion Motorola Droid 3
Android verison: 2.3.4
System version: 5.7.906
System update report: "Your device is up to date! No update is necessary at this time."
Phone's age: 1 year


After unlocking my screen and opening up an application that accepts keyboard input (texting apps, web browsers, notepads, ect) I sometimes cannot input any characters - both on the physical keyboard and the digital keyboard. I typically deal with this by pressing dozens of characters at random until they start to appear again.

However, keystrokes are being somewhat recognized, which can be confirmed since each keystroke envokes a small vibration (set by the "Vibrate on kepress" switch in the Multi-touch keyboard settings. Further, my choice in texting application "Chomp" attempts to guess the word you're typing as you type it. Although no characters are actually being inserted into a message when this problem is occuring, Chomp at least detects the characters and makes word/spelling suggestions. Still, no words/letters are input into any text field box.

I'm aware that a factory reset would be a favorable method of potentially finding a solution, but am looking for alternatives.
You can try this:

Go into Settings>Application Manager and locate your keyboard.  This could be listed a few different ways, depending on your phone.  For example, I'm using Swift Key so that's what mine is listed under.  It could say software keyboard, or whatever for your hardware keyboard.  Anyway, once you find it, tap the button to clear the cache.  Unless you have a bunch of custom settings you are probably safe to clear data as well.  Once that is done give it another try.  This will solve a lot of annoying keyboard issues, but as you said, who knows.  It could be something else going on where a reset is your best bet.  Hope this helps!