They may seem more like gifs right now, but I’m still getting the hang of it.

This gives me a really good sense of cleanliness and minimalism. I feel like I can get a lot more done now with a clean desktop. Now, let’s see if I actually can.

“SwiftKey brings the future of text entry to smartphones. It uses TouchType’s breakthrough Fluency™ technology to predict the next word you want to type, before you even press a key.”

http://www.swiftkey.net/

SwiftKey is all about speed, accuracy, and intelligence.  It learns as you type messages, remembering phrases and words you use frequently.  After learning from your messages it then predicts the next word you want to type using TouchType’s Fluency™ prediction engine, going from typing out the entire word, letter by letter, to just one click.

I decided to use SwiftKey’s 30 day trial of the alternative keyboard to do some testing and then report and compare my findings to my favorite keyboard ShapeWriter (ShapeWriter has been purchased by Nuance, and is not currently available.)

It takes some time adjusting to a new keyboard, which is why I have given myself 30 days to do it.  I think in a month of use, I can see fully the pro’s and con’s of this keyboard.
At first glance, SwiftKey is a great looking keyboard.  The color combos make it look visually appealing.  The keyboard is not invasive and it doesn’t take up any more space than it should, even with the predictive text options above the keyboard.

The keyboard has nice shortcuts for numbers 0-9, and some common symbols and even a voice button for voice input, which I will go over later.

The Keyboard does exactly what SwiftKey claims it does, Learn and Predict.  I have been very impressed that the app actually learns how I type and what I type.  It will recognize words and names and different spellings I might use, and then learns them so it can predict it for later use.  The prediction technology is solid.

There is one thing however, that irritates me when I am typing using SwiftKey.  I tend to look directly at the keyboard when I type, trying to make sure I punch in the right letters, as I’m sure most of us do.  In some cases, if your finger is only slightly off or punches the next letter over, SwiftKey won’t correctly predict your word based on one or two small typos. Because I am trying to get every letter correctly, I will sometimes miss the prediction. This does however, happens with almost all prediction text messaging.

There are three boxes above the keyboard that contain predicted words.  The one in the middle, a blue box, is most commonly the correct predicted word of the three.  While typing this does change though based on your text input.

I find that more frequently than not, while am typing, I see my predicted word in the middle or on one of the two side boxes. As I finish typing the next letter in the word and am about to punch the predicted option (two small keystrokes that can happen in 1 or 2 10th’s of a second), the correct word will switch to the middle or to the outsides before I can punch the predicted word I was going for, giving me a totally different word than I want.  This could mostly be my thumbs are moving faster than my eyes, however it occurs enough to be a problem that really slows down the speed of my typing.

While this does happen quite frequently, I am still impressed with the keyboard and enjoy it’s features.  One feature that I am a big fan of and that I haven’t seen anywhere else is in it’s voice to text option. When I usually hit a voice search, or voice to text input on the phone, I get whatever comes out, whether it is right or wrong.  If wrong, I am forced to either manually fix the text, or try another voice input – saying the phrase more clearly.
With SwiftKey, when doing a voice input, I get three different options that it hears and get to choose the best matching phrase. A feature, like I mentioned earlier, that I have never seen before on any other voice input I’ve seen on the Android OS. This sole feature brings me closer to keeping this as my default keyboard, as I tend to do more voice input because of the accuracy I get with it.

I performed a speed test using four different keyboards.  ShapeWriter, The Default Android Keyboard, the Gingerbread Keyboard, and of course SwiftKey.  I wrote the same phrase, three different times on the same keyboard and timed myself. The results are below.

Sentence used: This is a random test using an alternative keyboard on the android operating system.Note: All attempts had exactly the same spelling, grammar and wording.  If not, the test was thrown out.

It’s clear that SwiftKey and ShapeWriter beat out the default Android keyboards anywhere from 4 seconds to 10 seconds.  This is a large margin, where I think both of these keyboards really shine.  It is clear that these keyboards are much faster than the defaults.

Also, we can see that ShapeWriter does have the fastest overall and average times, but what I think is most important to notice is that SwiftKey went a slow 28s to a very fast 21s.  The only explanation for this is that SwiftKey learned my typing style and predicted what I was going to say next. This brings me to my conclusion.

SwiftKey is a great keyboard.  It is one of the fastest keyboards I’ve used. It’s prediction starts out great and only gets better the more you use the keyboard. The prediction really shines when you are using very common phrases that you might use a lot.  ”Hello, how are you today?” “What are you doing tonight?” “Let’s meet for lunch”, things like that. This keyboard will really impress you if you are coming from the default Android keyboard. You will be amazed how fast you can type, how accurate, and you will be afraid that your phone knows exactly what you are thinking.  Coming from ShapeWriter, I was still very impressed with the keyboard and was only discouraged by what I mentioned earlier and that it did slow my typing down just a little bit. That being said, I will continue the rest of the 30 day trial, and see if the keyboard speeds up with more use and overcomes my favorite and speedy keyboard, ShapeWriter.

Pictures from http://www.swiftkey.net

photographed

Hopefully this will be the first of many videos. Let me know what you liked, didn’t like, or would like to see.

Let the filming begin!

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