MobiusPizza
Lurker
Hi I am new here but I setup an account just to declare my recommendation on the Google Pinyin keyboard. First of all I may be biased as I am not a fan of swipe input which seems to dominate the Android keyboard landscape for typing English.
In my humble opinion, the best user-friendly keyboard for typing English is actually the Google Pinyin Keyboard. Pinyin, for those who doesn't know, is an input method for typing Chinese. So why am I recommending a Chinese keyboard for English input even over the default Google Keyboard? --- The unique slide feature, which also explains why it doesn't support swipe. This slide feature is the biggest unique selling point of this keyboard, and make it one of the quickest keyboard I have ever used on Android, and in my opinion, labelling it the best is an understatement and I urge anyone to try using it. On Google play people downrated this keyboard without ever discovering this feature, and rated it down because they can't uninstall it etc, which is a shame really.
What is this slide feature and why is it superior? When typing proper English, punctuation and capitalization are crucial. Not to forget numbers too. The slide feature allows those to be easily input without changing mode (e.g. numpad mode), pressing shift key, etc. It works like this: If I want to type a capital 'H', I put my finger on "h" and slide it upwards, simple as that. This is much quicker than pressing shift key then typing "h" in most keyboard setups. What about symbols and numbers? You slide downwards---each letter in the alphabet has on the key icon commonly used punctuations in grey, to type them you press on the alphabet and slide down. The top "qwerty" row has numbers 1 on 'Q' to 9 on 'O' then 0 on 'P'. With slide down you can type numbers quickly. 'V' for example, sliding down gives a question mark '?'. You don't actually have to slide down for symbols and numbers, you can also tap and hold. To me it is a bit redundant and they should use tap and hold for other uses such as typing European accented characters.
Lets talk about the downside of the keyboard, it has a few. The most disappointing one to me is the word prediction is inferior to the Google keyboard, which is no excuse since both keyboard are from Google! The biggest problem is it does not learn from your manual corrections when you choose from the word suggestion list. It does however support user dictionary, but there is no user friendly way to add words to it, and I still can't recall how I did it last time. Please note that the auto-correct feature, which is a must unless you are a God in hitting the right keys all the time, should be enabled in options---it isn't enabled by default!
In any case, in my humble opinion and usage scenario I have always find this keyboard to be quicker just because of the slide feature on capitalization and symbols/numbers. Please have a try and tell me what you think.
Thanks for reading and disclaimer, I don't work for Google and I receive no financial gain from expressing my opinion
In my humble opinion, the best user-friendly keyboard for typing English is actually the Google Pinyin Keyboard. Pinyin, for those who doesn't know, is an input method for typing Chinese. So why am I recommending a Chinese keyboard for English input even over the default Google Keyboard? --- The unique slide feature, which also explains why it doesn't support swipe. This slide feature is the biggest unique selling point of this keyboard, and make it one of the quickest keyboard I have ever used on Android, and in my opinion, labelling it the best is an understatement and I urge anyone to try using it. On Google play people downrated this keyboard without ever discovering this feature, and rated it down because they can't uninstall it etc, which is a shame really.
What is this slide feature and why is it superior? When typing proper English, punctuation and capitalization are crucial. Not to forget numbers too. The slide feature allows those to be easily input without changing mode (e.g. numpad mode), pressing shift key, etc. It works like this: If I want to type a capital 'H', I put my finger on "h" and slide it upwards, simple as that. This is much quicker than pressing shift key then typing "h" in most keyboard setups. What about symbols and numbers? You slide downwards---each letter in the alphabet has on the key icon commonly used punctuations in grey, to type them you press on the alphabet and slide down. The top "qwerty" row has numbers 1 on 'Q' to 9 on 'O' then 0 on 'P'. With slide down you can type numbers quickly. 'V' for example, sliding down gives a question mark '?'. You don't actually have to slide down for symbols and numbers, you can also tap and hold. To me it is a bit redundant and they should use tap and hold for other uses such as typing European accented characters.
Lets talk about the downside of the keyboard, it has a few. The most disappointing one to me is the word prediction is inferior to the Google keyboard, which is no excuse since both keyboard are from Google! The biggest problem is it does not learn from your manual corrections when you choose from the word suggestion list. It does however support user dictionary, but there is no user friendly way to add words to it, and I still can't recall how I did it last time. Please note that the auto-correct feature, which is a must unless you are a God in hitting the right keys all the time, should be enabled in options---it isn't enabled by default!
In any case, in my humble opinion and usage scenario I have always find this keyboard to be quicker just because of the slide feature on capitalization and symbols/numbers. Please have a try and tell me what you think.
Thanks for reading and disclaimer, I don't work for Google and I receive no financial gain from expressing my opinion