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You can do this! Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Auto-Correction [off] & Check Spelling [on]. Reading a lot of the complaints here, they really need to create some sort of onboarding for the keyboard and make it more transparent what the switches do in the settings menu. I was pretty pissed when they launched slide to type, until I played with these and found that turning predictive off feels waaay better. It took…
Guess it shows how long it’s been since I've even been in those settings, last I remember there was just like two or three options. But realizing with auto correct off it doesn’t auto capitalize I like I’d expect. There’s still some improvements to be had
Getting into the weeds here a bit but you can create a Text Replacement so that “i” gets expanded to “I”. That said, I don’t use it, when I first changed it took me a few painful weeks to get used to a new dumber keyboard, but in the end it is just so much less frustrating not using a “smart” input device. I can stand making a typo, I mean I even make them on a proper keyboard! But I am absolutely infuriated by having my correct word get replaced with the wrong one.