Is there a predictive keyboard like Tengo on Android?

[polstein]

I'm looking for a keyboard that has a small amount of buttons, each with some combination of letters. When you press the letters, the keyboard figures out what combination of letters & gives you your word.

T9 uses this method, but I dislike the layout & it's too many buttons I think. Tengo used to do this, but on Windows & hasn't been heard from in years. Snapkeys is going to do it with 4 keys.. maybe.. sometime in the future.

Are there other keyboards with weird layouts that I don't know about? I know of ones like Messageease & Flit Keyboard, but both of these require sliding in specific directions to get your word not a prediction engine.

Thanks for any help.

Oh - if it exists, context word guessing is a plus, as is next word prediction & a good way to manually enter letters for things like passwords!

 

[chanchan05]

I haven't seen a keyboard without predictive text, so safe to say they all probably have it.

I seem to remember a keyboard with a half qwerty layout, I think it was Better Keyboard. You may want to try that out.

 

[polstein]

Predictive might be the wrong word here - I don't mean when you type a few letters & it gives suggestions (which I call 'auto-complete').

I was talking to the maker of the Flit keyboard this morning, and he thinks the reason you don't see keyboards like Tengo anymore is because of a Patent by T9 over keyboards that use a small number of buttons & try to figure out what word you want from them.

If so, then either Snapkeys is paying a licence, doesn't know, or is working around it (or the Flit guy is wrong). If he's right, it would explain why I can't find any keyboards with a T9-like prediction on a different layout.

 

[chiefvelo]

It sounds like you are looking for "sure type" like on Black Berry. I use to use that and the closest i found was a version of the HTC Keyboard that let you set it with a copy of that. You can customize your own and works with recent android OS'. I have switched to Swiftkeyx and Swype as my primary. they are so much better for me.
google "HTC IME" and you can see it. search the threads and you should find it too. make your own skin for a version here.
http://www.gimpsta.com/themer/

good luck

 

[polstein]

I never heard of the sure type thing, but looks like the compact keyboard used in several keyboards. I use it sometimes on Touchpal (so I can switch from the compact layout without sliding & back to the full keyboard with sliding).

Out of curiosity - you say you use Swiftkey & Swype? Are you like me where you tend to switch from keyboard to keyboard? It seems I have days where Swype (and similar) keyboards work great... then I have several bad days and move to a thumb-type keyboard. Turns into an odd circle-of-keyboards for me.

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Mostly unrelated thought: I was just thinking about the advantages of some keyboards that auto-complete where you save time & clicks by only needing to enter the first few letters of a word then clicking one of the suggested ones. If you're lucky (or using Swiftkey X), you can then click the next work automatically.

One minor problem I've always had with the suggested word things is that I have to slow down to read the suggested words - often it's faster to just finish the word & type the next one.

Also - the placement of the suggestions is pretty universally at the top of the keyboard, which is often a stretch for me. Swiftkey lets you hit the space, but only for the middle suggestion.

I wonder how different it would be if you had the keyboard on the right side of the screen, in some layout designed to be used with 1 finger (something like MessageEase) and have all the suggested auto-complete/next words on the left side of the screen (so the right thumb is responsible for typing 1-5 letters, and the left thumb picks the words & next-words).

There's some different keyboards out there (8pen!), but I can't help but think that there are some better ways to do text entry on a phone that just aren't out there yet.

 

[chanchan05]

Ah I see, not exactly predictive. Personally though I just stick to swype and swipe everything in. Haven't had much problems. Although it did take me a good month to get used to it.