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What's You Favorite Android Keyboard?...

mauiblue said:
If you can find it (it's on the Internet) Shapewriter is my favorite of all five text input keyboards I have on my Incredible. Swype and Swiftkey are tied for second.
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The tracing component of FlexT9 is Shapewriter; Nuance bought the company, which is why you can't find Shapewriter in the market any more. They did fix a few things before putting it into FlexT9; it's a good deal less buggy now, and they got rid of that awful after-the-fact "change case" key and gave it a proper shift key. But it's still Shapewriter under the covers.
 
I tried out Swype, didn't work out so good for me. I don't know how can people do that, it was damn impossible for me, and frustrating. I couldn't see where I was going... cuz of my finger... I had to be reeeaaaly precise every time, most of the time I got it wrong. Nop. Didn't work. Plus, I really hate the way it works.

If you want the best keyboard then just get Swiftkey Beta X (it's actually Swiftkey 2.0 but named Beta because of the new X release). It's damn awesome.

The predictions are so accurate it's like it's reading my mind, plus it supports 3 languages in the same time. Plus you can make it learn from your previous typing, from SMS, Twitter, Gmail and Facebook.

I linked all my accounts and when I started typing the damn keyboard already knew the names of all my friends, all the places I'm talking about, all the food I eat, all the usernames I have... it was damn scary if you ask me to realize how much info there is about me out there.
 
I haven't actually tried SwiftKey, but the problem I have had with other predictive keyboards in the past is that they require me to do three things at once: compose the text I'm writing, watch my fingers on the keyboard so I hit the right keys, and watch the suggestion bar to see if the word I want is there or not and either stop typing and select that word or keep typing until the word does appear. Although I'm sure that's a skill that develops with practice, it's currently too much for my brain to handle -- I can process two out of the three but not all three. I find that either I get caught up in the mechanics of text entry, typing and watching the suggestion bar, and I forget where I was going with the sentence/paragraph I'm composing, or I end up ignoring the suggestion bar and just going ahead and typing the full words, only rarely making use of the suggestions.

Since I'd rather type sentences that make sense :-) and thus usually don't watch the suggestion bar, at least the Swype/SlideIT/FlexT9 keyboards let me type faster than with a character-at-a-time keyboard.
 
Slightly off topic... I have a friend who has Parkinsons. She uses an iPhone, and when she saw the speech to text ability of the Android, she was impressed, and would really love to have that option on her iPhone, due to her illness.

I am NOT iOS literate. Anyone know if you can swap the keyboards on an iPhone? Is there a keyboard with voice to text for the iOS?

Thanks!

P.S. LOVE... Flex T9... voice to text, as others have mentioned, is simply amazing, esp. now that I realize you can say your punctuation, and it puts it in! That was my one gripe...having to go back to add periods, commas and question marks!
 
I loved Swype, but I've gone through a few phone swaps (the headphone jack on the original Motorola Droid goes every few months) and I'm out of installs/resets on Swype and they haven't responded to my request to reset the count so I have been unable to install it on my latest Droid.

So I've been using SlideIT since then. I definitely prefer Swype over SlideIT. Swype seemed to be much more forgiving of sloppiness in the traces. With SlideIT it will sometimes just come up with ??. And if it gives me the wrong word and the correct one isn't one of the suggestions, it ends up deleting the whole word and forcing me to re-enter it. Swype at least I could delete just the last few letters if needed.

I might try out FlexT9 based on the comments above.
 
Just wondering where you all got FlexT9 from? Im unable to find it in the market (Australia).

Could somebody please provide an apk, or suggest how to get FlexT9?

Update: I managed to find an apk, however the trace or voice components dont work...

Another update.. Market acceee allowed me to get this ap from the US site ;)
 
No-one's mentioned Better Keyboard yet - thats what I currently use. Am quite happy with it, and the developer gives good support - which in my experience is unusual, most emails I send to app developers get ignored!

Alan
 
MessagEase by a long shot. It is scientifically designed for cell phones. I can "type" faster and more accurately on it than anything else. The developer is extremely responsive to user inputs. You can get it free on the Android Market. They even have a game to help you learn the keyboard quickly.
 
Just downloaded the Swiftkey X Beta based on people in this thread have said. LO-V-E-ING IT.

Love the look as well.
 
Another vote For SwiftKey x beta. I'm a very poor and slow typist but this keyboard has really sped up my typing. Amazing.
 
wmm said:
The tracing component of FlexT9 is Shapewriter; Nuance bought the company, which is why you can't find Shapewriter in the market any more. They did fix a few things before putting it into FlexT9; it's a good deal less buggy now, and they got rid of that awful after-the-fact "change case" key and gave it a proper shift key. But it's still Shapewriter under the covers.
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I notice FlexT9 is $4.99 on Amazon. I can live with the shortcomings of Shapewriter which is free. Wish I got FlexT9 when it was offered as a freebie on Amazon:(.
 
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