How to type the same 'a' vowel kana twice on a smartphone with flick input?

Question

Flick input - an input method commonly used with smartphones in Japan - allows you to flick a character in a direction to quickly type kana. Just tapping instead of flicking gives you a kana with the 'a' vowel. Tapping the same character more than once iterates through the vowels, in a loop. How do you type the same 'a' vowel character twice?

E.g. ああ, かか, ささ

The way I've been doing it, for as long as I can remember, is to tap the character once, add a space, a backspace and then type it again. I'm hoping there is a more elegant solution.

Answer 1

Basically, you just need to turn off the old-style phone input, so tapping doesn't cycle through the available options anymore. That way you can just tap あ twice in rapid succession to type ああ.

On an iPhone, you can set フリックのみ under the keyboard settings. I'm sure you can do this on Android keyboards as well, although I don't have an Android phone myself.