The New Hotness?

I previously blogged about an awesome new way to enter text on Android: Swype. But now there's a new contender: SwiftKey. 

SwiftKey learns your typing habits and tries to guess what you'll say next. I found it takes a while to learn your unique writing style, but sometimes it surprises me. It guesses which word you're going to type next and all you have to do is press the space bar. Sometimes, half a sentence will go by and all I'm doing is pressing the space bar over and over. The effect is spectacular. 

It includes the other features you'd expect from a modern typing app, including auto correct, auto complete, and a voice recognition button (on Android). It also works with the physical keyboard, which is an advantage over Swype. Another advantage is that it's available for purchase it in the app store right now; Swype isn't. 

I used SwiftKey to write this entire article.  It tells me I used 40% fewer keystrokes.

I think my biggest complaint is that I'm not used to it yet. I find myself typing slower in order to watch the predictions. Also, it has little tricks that are diffdifferent from Swype. That's a common problem. Software is entering a new golden age and the rules have not yet been written. That means no standardization. 

The other problem with SwiftKey is that Swype has spoiled me with its fantastic word entry. SwiftKey may be faster at entering whole sentences, but Swype is still faster with individual words. I suspect the net speed of SwiftKey is faster, but first I'll have to unlearn everything I learned with Swype. 

Oh yeah: SwiftKey isn't free. It comes with a one month demo, which I suspect is just enough to get hooked. I already have a free beta of Swype. On the other hand, at $2, it might just be the first smartphone app that I actually purchase.

Bottom line: SwiftKey is a really cool app and it's definitely worth a try.