For those of us whose desktop computers don't do that, it's kind of annoying and totally unfamiliar. I had to find the answer on a forum before discovering the on-screen keys aren't simply broken.

It's not "discoverable" enough - because it's far from obvious that typing space is the trick to getting something to happen. After all, when you type another character, in most cases you just get the other character and the ~ seems like it did nothing except highlight in blue and have no effect.

And the visual cues, even in the "fixed" behaviour (see the bug entry) are still unhelpful. Just a simple message text or different icons for accent keys would make it a lot clearer.

On my computer dead keys are disabled unless a dead-key-shift is used. Then a sequence like dead-key-shift + ~, n does produce ñ. That's a much nicer behaviour imho for UK keyboard layouts.

Also why is there a dedicated ñ key as well? That could have been used for something else like thorn

Why isn't cedilla a dead key? It could replace the ç key, allowing other cedilla characters to be typed. (I forget which ones are used, but there are others).

And how do I get the thorn character (like o but with four short lines radiating out) - it's a character I use a lot in SMSs on other phones. Thanks