I have written earlier about Windows Phone 8 (~Nokia Lumia phones) supporting display of “Tamil” language texts. The support is not 100%, though you could read Tamil texts, you couldn’t type in Tamil (Tamil IME/Keyboard was missing). I am expecting Microsoft to release an IME for Tamil in their future updates (I am not privy to any release plans or dates).
In the meanwhile I was finding it difficult to correspond in Tamil with friends using my Nokia Lumia 925. Tired of waiting, I had our mobile team at Vishwak Solutions write a basic app that allows Tamil text typing. The app is live and available for free download from Windows Phone store (India, USA, Singapore, Malaysia, UK). The app allows you to use a basic Tamil touch keyboard, copy the typed text to clipboard. Once the text is copied you can switch to any app of your choice & paste the text.
The app was developed using C# & XAML (Initially we tried with HTML & Javascript but went with XAML). We are aware the experience is not smooth switching between Tamil & English and on other areas, unfortunately we were constrained due to restrictions of Windows Phone API and had to develop this around those limitations.
We are planning to release the full source code in Github shortly, will update this blog post once done.
Update (12/Feb/2014): We have published the full source code in Github here for anyone to download and use under Artistic license 2.0.
Tamil keyboard app for Windows Phone 8