By Greg Kumparak over at MobileCrunch has put together a quick video showing Swype in action on the HTC Eris. Swype, for those unfamiliar, lets you spell out words you want to type by using one simple fluid movement – swiping from letter to letter. When you’re done with a word, let up and move to the next one.
In the accompanying article he has nothing but good things to say, including but not limited to:
- After just a few minutes of get accustomed to Swype, I’m already typing a bit faster than I am on the standard Android keyboard. With a bit of practice, I could probably double my speed.
- I’m surprised how sloppy I can be with my tracing before Swype starts tripping up. Once you start blasting away at it, it’s almost magical.
- Works in both portrait and landscape mode
- Adding words is simple: You just type them manually, letter by letter. I taught it every curse word I know in a minute or two.
- Switching back and forth between Swype and the standard keyboard is a matter of holding your thumb on any text input box, hitting “Select Input Method”, and picking whichever keyboard you prefer.
Personally I’m pretty excited to try this and have wanted to for a bit now. I do a fair amount of texting amongst other keyboard heavy tasks so anything to speed things along is welcome in my book.
…and by the looks of it – they’re in for the long haul:
“Seattle, WA – Swype, an innovative text input technology, today announced that it has secured $5.6 million in Series B financing led by Nokia Growth Partners, Samsung Ventures, and returning investor Benaroya Capital. The infusion will be used to further fuel Swype’s partnerships integrating Swype technology into more mobile handsets and ultimately expand to other touch and remote screen devices.”
…read full press release.
[ MobileCrunch | Swype Inc. | Gizmodo’s head-to-head ]
If it’s free and has a Sense theme I will be happy..
This is cool. :)
How do I download it – :P
sweet, i hope to be getting my first android phone, and to my partial dismay it will likely not have a physical keyboard….swype sounds like the next step in onscreen text input for smaller screens. i like it!
I’ve got Swype working on my Samsung Omnia from Verizon & I LOVE IT!
@G8D… just to recap…”Swype, an innovative text input technology, today announced that it has secured $5.6 million in Series B financing” And you want it to be free? What is it with so many free loaders? A bunch of people spend time and money to produce an application that makes your life easier (over 5 1/2 million in this case) and you want it for free. That being the case, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind coming to work for me…for free of course. Blah!
seems like it needs some time to master, will try it once it gets released
This looks quite nice for portrait mode, but I can’t imagine it being very useful in landscape mode.
The developers of this app deserve to be able to charge for it, and $1-$5 is plenty reasonable. The only way it should be free is if the phone companies or providers pay Swype’s developers a set amount to offer it for free to their users.
why cant i find it in the market??
Is this beta available now? I would pay for it… but then Roger’s really doesn’t like me giving money to anyone but them…
@Ironosity One man’s opinion that an app is worth a certain amount of money doesn’t mean everybody has to think that way. For example, I would get an iPhone, if it was free and there were no contract fees. That doesn’t mean I’m a free loader, that is just my opinion of the value of an iPhone. If you think Swype is worth X amount of dollars, and it is at or below that price, by all means, purchase it. Can’t we play nice?
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is available only of devices from manufacturers that license this tech. The problem with releasing it on the Market is that it needs to be pretty cheap for an individual purchases to make a difference in the revenue (say $1-3) but that would remove the incentive for the manufacturers to license this tech since they will probably have to pay more than that for each device.
Having said that, I wish they release it on the Market as paid app.
Swype’s plan all along has been to get it included in the OS and licensed by manufacturers, hence the fact that it comes standard with the Samsung Omnia before it has been released as an app for any platform. We’ll see if they manage to convince Google that everyone will like it enough for it to come standard with android. Otherwise I think they will probably work with the manufacturers to get it included in their special blends of Android (sense, motoblur, touchwiz…). Hopefully in that case they’ll still release it as an app because I wouldn’t mind paying $5 for it on the Droid.
Wow this looks great! I’d be willing to pay for it if I could demo it first.
I’d love to have it as an app download, for any Android device. Having it for fast input on the Entourage eDGe, for example, would be amazingly cool.
Or maybe I should just show this URL to Entourage and suggest that they get it worked into their version of Android :-)
until swype is released… there’s always shapewriter. Same concept, not aware of any differences, and currently avail in the app market.
Anyway Swype is not released yet…
But the concept is fantastic, and it’s available now in SlideIT, for all Symbian an Windows Mobile versions.
It will be available soon for Android !
http://mobiletextinput.com/
@Ironosity
Perhaps it has not occurred to you that I might not be in a position to purchase this, or any app. Does this remove my right to show interest in it?
Also, I took it that they had received 5.6 million from Nokia etc, therefore it could be free? Maybe I am wrong.