[EDIT: as Jonah points out in the comments below, you can now skip over this tedium by holding down the "0" (zero) key for a second or two, and a popup will allow you to choose the degree symbol. That seems to answer the question about whether or not it was an oversight.]

It seems like a huge oversight, especially as it’s easy enough to type the degree symbol (“°”) on a Mac keyboard (shift-option-8, if you’re curious), but the iPhone seems to have no way of entering it. Or does it? Allow me to describe the very convoluted way I discovered.

Serendipity, actually – I’ve been attempting to learn Japanese for a while, and I had added the Japanese input method to my iPhone so I can type the kana and kanji, and there it was, sitting in a hidden (for me, anyway) menu off a seemingly useless option. But here are the steps you can use to replicate it.

First, go into settings, then keyboard, then international keyboard, then scroll down to Japanese:



You’ll notice that the Japanese isn’t simply an on/off choice, but has its own submenu. Turn on the Kana option:


Now if you pop up a few levels, you’ll see that there are two keyboards enabled instead of just the one:


OK! Now the setup is complete (you should never need to do that again), here’s what you do when you want to type in the degree symbol. First, go into the app you want to type the ° symbol in, and you’ll see there’s a new icon to the left of the space bar:


Tapping that will bring you to the Japanese keyboard. Press the ABC button – yes, even though we just came from a proper English keyboard, there’s a Japanese version of the alphabet:


You’ll notice that it looks like a traditional pushbutton telephone layout. It works the same as well (e.g. “C” is entered by pressing the ABC button [top middle] three times). Anyway, there is also a “{star}123″ button. Press that:


And there, under the number “3″ is the degree symbol! Press “3″ three times and you’ll see something that looks like:


At this point you can simply tap the blue ° on the screen, or if you needed °C, you can just tap that instead. Alas, no °F in the choices. To get back to the QWERTY layout, press that globe symbol on the bottom left again.

Et voilà or, QED.

UPDATE: From Night Spring on the Mac Rumors forum comes this tip: After you type in the degree sign, switch to the alphabet mode in the Japanese keyboard, and type in an F. The selection box should change to show a “°F” among the choices. Select that, and next time you type the degree sign, “°F” should show up without your having to type the “F.”