I’m kind of nuts about android keyboards. I’ve tried them all, even the weird ones, but I always seem to come back to Swype. It is simply the smoothest interface for one-handed touchscreen input, as far as I’m concerned. At least, it was.
The other major keyboard contender has always been SwiftKey. Predictive typing that saves you time by guessing not just what word you’re typing now, but what you’re going to type next. To me, this was always an intriguing option, but could never keep up with the ease of Swyping. Today, SwiftKey levels that playing field with SwiftKey Flow beta. If you’ve used SwiftKey, you’ll likely feel comfortable with the predictive abilities of Flow. Nothing about the way Flow works is different from SwiftKey 3, except the addition of gesture typing. That one change, however, is enough to radically alter the experience, if you choose to use it.
With Swype, you need to complete the gesture for the entire word you wanted or it simply doesn’t know what you want. With SwiftKey Flow, you get the advantage of SwiftKey’s predictions before you begin a word, plus a single attempt at guessing while you gesture. If SwiftKey guesses your word before you’re done, you can pick up your finger and move on to the next word. It’s not quite as slick as the prediction hovering over your finger in the stock Android 4.2 keyboard, but it seems more effective at actually guessing where I’m headed.
Flow has also brought a unique feature to its gesture typing. Instead of lifting your finger between words, you have the option of sliding your gesture through the spacebar. As a longtime Swype user, this takes a while to get used to, but I can see it speeding up typing quite a bit in the long run. This is a great feature to see, coming from the designer of a keyboard that has always leaned heavily on the spacebar.
SwiftKey Flow is currently in an open beta. You can download both phone and tablet versions here. It’s unclear if Flow will be a free upgrade to SwiftKey 3 or if it will be yet another paid version. As someone who has already paid twice for this software (I have both the standard and tablet versions), I’m seriously hoping for free.
I would’ve loved to see a swipe-to-delete gesture, like most gesture keyboards have, but that option seems to be lacking in SwiftKey Flow. Gestures also seem to be disabled in browser URL bars, username fields, and SwiftKey tablet’s split landscape mode. I can’t really agree with that decision, because Swype has always worked fine with all of those situations (though admittedly, Swyping on a landscape tablet has always been something of a chore). Given SwiftKey’s ability to learn from your Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail accounts, plus your phone’s SMS history and (conveniently for me) an RSS feed, it’s unnecessary to worry about oddly spelled website names like Flickr and Swype (see, that worked just fine).
Despite these limitations, the combination of gestures and prediction makes for an impressively fast experience. It works well enough that I was able to write this entire article from my phone, something I’ve never done before. It’s too soon to be certain, but I may have a new favorite android keyboard.
Comments are closed.