Swype for Android is A Real Game-Changer
By: Hillel Fuld
From day one of using Android 1.5 on a Samsung Galaxy, my main complaint was text input. Besides the obvious phone calls, the main ways I use my mobile phone is tweeting, texting, and the occasional Facebooking. If you’ll notice, all three of those have one thing in common; they all require typing. Coming from a BlackBerry Bold, which has in my opinion, the best keyboard on the market, to a Galaxy or better yet, Android 1.5, made it close to impossible for me to type a word without mistakes.
I am not talking about the fact that it has a virtual keyboard, I use an iPod Touch and I type pretty fast and accurately on it, I am referring to the size of the letters, the bundled corrective software, and the typing experience as a whole. I began searching for keyboard replacements, which by the way, would never fly in Apple Land. I loved it that I had options. The first replacement I came across was an app called “Better Keyboard”. It was good and I used it for some time, but I was still not satisfied.
Then I heard about Swype. Swype, as the title states, changed the name of the game. No more pressing one letter, lifting your finger, and typing the second letter. The developers of Swype thought there was a lot of wasted time there, and they were right. With Swype, you simply drag your finger from one letter to the other, and somehow miraculously (not really a miracle), the software knows what you are trying to type. I heard about it, read about it, watched a few YouTube videos, then decided to try it, thinking there is no way it would work as well as advertised.
I was wrong! Swype (Beta) is pure awesome! I type faster using Swype then I do on the iPod for sure, and I did not time myself, but I am inclined to think maybe even faster than on the BlackBerry. What is amazing about Swype is not that it offers an easy keyboard to type on, rather that it shows there is more room for innovation in the mobile market. When T9 came out, it was revolutionary and allowed people without QWERTY keyboards to type fast on their phones. Swype brings it to the next level. If I had a dime for every person that said that the mobile industry has nowhere else to go, that there is no more room for new technologies, I would be a rich man. Swype proves those people wrong. It is a completely new method of typing on your phone, it works well, and improves your speed and accuracy.
There is a slight learning curve when it comes to using Swype, like for example, how to type one letter twice, but once you learn the tricks, you will be flying through those emails in no time.
As I was writing this review, I came across another company that does something very similar to Swype. It is called SlideIt, and it is pretty much the same concept. I am not sure which app was first to come up with this concept, but does it really matter? The bottom line is, the idea is great, the implementation is near flawless, and as a result, we can type a whole lot faster on our Android devices.
I would definitely recommend any Android users download Swype or SlideIt, decide which one you like better and use it as your default keyboard.
Our Rating: 4/5
Developer: Swype
