It’s a new wave in touchscreen inputs; a revolutionary new approach that provides for much faster and more satisfying typing experience. The original technology was developed by a Swype Inc., soon acquired and integrated in selected smartphones like the Samsung Omnia II and Motorola Atrix 4G.
That was in the end of 2011, and since then Swype has been released as a free app, available both for Android and iOS. You can now use this innovative input method in your smartphone or tablet, and we do guarantee you won’t want to go back.
What is Swyping Style Input?
It’s the end of pecking your finger against the screen, frantically trying to convey your messages. With the Swype style input, you just glide your finger in a fluid gesture, picking up the letters for each word along the way. And it works like magic!
The thing about this input method is that it relies on sophisticated error-correction algorithms to accurately guess the word you’re looking to type. And more often than not, it will really put forward the right word. The occasionally complicated spellings is easily tackled with a language model that calculates possible different wordings from the letters you swipe through, proposing various alternatives for you to pick.
It may sound a little complicated in theory, but as you can see in the following video, it works very well indeed.
Getting Swype for Android
At the time of writing, the official Swype app is not yet available at the Android marketplace.
Getting this app installed is simple, although you may have to tinker with the Settings of your Android to allow it to download apps from outside the marketplace. Again, this isn’t complicated (you just need to tick a single checkbox), but if for some reason you’re not comfortable with doing so, you may want to instead try one of the competing swype-style apps for Android: currently the three most popular alternative Swype style apps are Touchpal keyboard, SlideIT and Swyftkey 3. They all have their particular strengths and weaknesses, and add unique spins to the Swype touch input; in a future article we’ll review all these apps in detail.
Getting Swype for iOS
It’s tough love for iOS users, since Swype inc. has no plans to develop a version of their app for iOS; actually, that’s not as much an option as a restriction, since it’s not as easy to develop third party apps for iOS as it is for Android. In short, they weren’t be authorized to distribute their app at the app store, quite possibly because the Apple folks would rather develop a similar future for native integration in the next iOS.
In all case, not all hope is lost for Apple enthusiasts who want to get Swype Style Input into their devices. An unnoficial version called “iSwype” has been developed and seems to work reasonably well… but the catch is – since it’s not allowed in the Apple Store, this app can only be installed in jailbroken iOS devices, through Cydia.
The Future of Touchscreen Typing?
The concept behind Swype style input is extremely well-done, and the application works extremely well. We believe that in a couple of years this touchscreen input style will become a universal standard; if you want to get ahead in the touchscreen typing game, make sure to download this app and try out out right now.