Hi everyone, thought I'd revive this thread.
Mike, you're right, Baidu is probably the best for pure Chinese input. But its English is still far behind the best Android keyboards (Swiftkey).
Swiftkey still doesn't have Chinese support, for some reason, but this alternative keyboard called Kii Keyboard has been getting very popular. It's great for English and can also be themed to look like the stock JB keyboard. It handles Chinese pretty well, though the candidate selection needs some work--you can't view all the possible candidates for each syllable, which is sort of dumb. I've raised this in the XDA thread for Kii so I hope the developer tries to make the Chinese input as good as Baidu or the iOS keyboard (I haven't used iOS that frequently, but when I have, the pinyin IME always seemed top-notch.)
Anyway, just thought I'd bump this thread to suggest Kii to frustrated folks who hate switching between Baidu and SwiftKey. If anyone has found a better alternative, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Also, can this thread please be moved to the Android section? I know it isn't a Pleco for Android question, but this might reach more people in that forum. Thanks.
Kii Keyboard link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zl.inputmethod.latin&hl=en