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SwiftKey 4.5 beta update brings support for emojis, optional dedicated number row and more

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SwiftKey fans are in for yet another big treat today, as a new beta update is now available for those who like being on cutting edge software. This is version 4.5, bringing with it over 500 new emojis for users to sink their teeth into. Almost anything you could think of will be represented here, and it’ll be accessible to you in a way that only SwiftKey could bring it.

SwiftKey Layouts for Living 2

They’ve leveraged their powerful suggestion and prediction engine to help you find the emoji you need, when you need it. For instance, when you’re typing the word “pizza” in, a pizza slice emoji will show up in the suggestion box, allowing you to insert it right there if you want to express your thought in a more fun way.

  • Classic emoji: Choose from more than 500 emoji across five categories: people, objects, nature, places and symbols.
  • Emoji word match:  As you type one of hundreds of key words, you can opt to be offered emoji predictions in the candidate bar. For example, typing “Santa” will offer you a Christmas emoji in addition to word predictions.
  • Emoji contextual predictions: SwiftKey 4.5 will learn from your personal use to suggest emoji you regularly use. For example, if you regularly include an emoji after an individual’s name, SwiftKey can learn to predict it, just for you.

SwiftKey offers up the following warning for folks, as different devices might produce different results:

As is always the case, the appearance of emoji can vary between different versions of Android and different apps. Emoji are only supported on Android Jellybean and KitKat (4.1 and later) and SwiftKey uses the system emoji font which is black and white in Jellybean and color in KitKat.

Some apps (including WhatsApp) render the emoji within messages with app-specific fonts, often the same as seen on Apple devices. Google Hangouts uses the same colour emoji font as KitKat. This means that although the meaning remains the same, the actual images may vary between apps and between the sending and receiving device.

Beyond all that, SwiftKey now offers an optional, dedicated number row for folks on bigger devices, so you won’t have to hunt and peck just to type in a number or two anymore.

All these settings are optional, so if you aren’t an emoji person you won’t have to be bombarded with suggestions to use them around every turn. It shouldn’t be long before this thing graduates to the Google Play Store, but if you want it now you can grab it by heading to the SwiftKey beta site.

Quentyn Kennemer
The "Google Phone" sounded too awesome to pass up, so I bought a G1. The rest is history. And yes, I know my name isn't Wilson.

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13 Comments

  1. uh I think you made a mistake in the website link…

    ps. found the right link online, the new keyboard works great. The top numbers row is what I was looking for (I have a Note 2).

    Also, an advantage is has over the google keyboard is the fact that it can handle two(or more) languages at once. I can switch between english and french without selecting the language :)

    1. A plus indeed for bilingual users!

  2. Plz check the hiper link provided (lol)…

  3. At least the link wasn’t an adult website… :-

  4. Nice to see emoji joining SwiftKey, finally. I use them sometimes with Hangouts, but they don’t always show up for others correctly (as mentioned in the article).

    I guess as more people get devices with better emoji support, this won’t be as much of an issue. Looking forward to seeing this roll out to an official update.

  5. The best $1.99 (on sale) I have spent has been with SwiftKey.. I love this keyboard. (*)<

    1. SwiftKey was one of the first apps I ever purchased for Android about 3+ years ago. Best investment I ever made on my device.

  6. Ooh, if only there was a way to have it identify when I’m using my S-pen, I’d go back to using Swiftkey full time again. Love the updates they’ve been doing to enhance the swiftkey experience. This is definitely going back on my tablet.

  7. hopefully this update is good enough to take me away from the samsung keyboard (note 3)

    1. My sentiments exactly. I love having the numbers at the top.

  8. yeah this made me mad… not nearly as responsive as my droid DNAs stock keyboard:P I switched back after about an hour of swiftkey making me mad. lol. the emoji typing would not go in instagram. :'( pretty upset

    1. Hi, you should leave this feedback here: http://vip.swiftkey.net/

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