Swiftkey: A New Way of Typing Submitted For Your Approval

One of the nicest things about Android is the ability to swap out different components of the phone. I recently downloaded an app called Swiftkey that allows me to change out the default on-screen keyboard for my Droid 4.  Why would I do such a thing? Well for you guys of course :)  This is a free app to trial but the permanent version can be purchased for $2.99.

Most people are used to a form of predictive text where the phone will predict the word you are trying to spell.  Swiftkey takes it a step further and predicts word after word.  It sounds weird until you actually have the keyboard in front of you.  Take a look at the videos below to get a preview of the app.  

I've dug through the apps settings and wanted to highlight a few options.

It will let you download keyboards that support a variety of languages including Spanish, German, Italian, and French. It does not support any Asian languages at this point.  

If you want to go back to the standard keyboard follow the following instructions.  

1) Create a new text message

2) Tap and hold your finger in the "Compose Message" area until a pop up menu appears

3) Select another keyboard

Swiftkey will ask you for your permission to look at your Facebook and Twitter accounts, email, blogs, and text messages in order to quickly learn how you communicate.  If you choose not to enable this feature, it will still learn your habits, but at a much slower space.

You can delete entire words by flicking your finger from right to left across the backspace button.

Holding the "Return" key will enable emoticons.

You can adjust the height of the keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes. 

The app keeps track of a couple stats which is a pretty neat trick.  It records the number of keystrokes saved, typos corrected, and total words predicted.  

Lastly, it scores your accuracy via a typing heat map.  The map is a visual representation of your typing style.  The blobs morph over time to fit the region that you tend to press when you want to use that key.  In layman's terms, the phone starts to learn if you can't type properly and adjusts accordingly. If you look at mine below, I apparently can't hit the letter A properly.