Let me start by saying, I love Swiftkey. I had only ever used the stock one since I started using Android, so when the $0.10 sale occured in December and Swiftkey was included, I thought ‘Why not?’ and haven’t looked back. Seriously, it’s Amazing! I love the text prediction, Twitter handle prediction in Twitter clients that don`t support it and everything else about it, well, except for the tiny spacebar and this is where Swiftkey 3 Beta comes in.
Swiftkey have not only redesigned the keyboard layout to enlarge the spacebar but they’ve taken steps in the core functionality of the way the keyboard works so that you may not even need the spacebar. Their word prediction has now added space prediction, which allows you to just type without spaces and Swiftkey will insert spaces where required, turning a mishmash of junk such as “pleasecallme” to “please call me”.
There are two new themes available ‘Cobalt’ which matches SwiftKey’s new look and feel, and an Ice Cream Sandwich-styled ‘Holo’ theme which was voted for by SwiftKey’s VIP community. The punctuation buttons have been changed to one integrated key which allows you to slide to select which punctuation mark you need. They have also added support for seven more languages – Korean, Estonian, Farsi, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian and Serbian. Bringing the total supported languages to 42(You know, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything).
Swiftkey is offering free access to the Beta APKs for both Tablets and Phones and as such at time of writing their servers are being hammered. You will need to sign up to the Swiftkey VIP community to get access to them but that’s a pretty small price to pay for what appears to be an excellent upgrade to an already excellent keyboard.
EDIT : Due to load on their servers Swiftkey have kindly provided direct links to the APKs for the Phone and Tablet. Please ensure you still sign up for the VIP section to supply feedback.
Still not convinced? Check out this video, this keyboard looks Stunning! :
The SwiftKey 3 beta is not getting an easy ride among users due to the removal of the punctuation keys either side of the space bar.
Great! After trying quite a few keyboards, Swiftkey is my regular one.