Swype is back with predictive phrases, emoji keyboard, and fresh new Star Trek themes
With all the SwiftKeys and Google Keyboards out there, you may have forgotten all about Swype, the once undisputed king of the swiping keyboards. After rival keyboard apps successfully emulated Swype’s gesture keyboard (although none of them do it quite as accurately), Swype sort of fell to wayside. This allowed competitors to focus on other features like adding emoji, GIF, themes, and whatever else the kids are into nowadays. Today, Swype is back (again). This time they got a handful of new features that’s saving keystrokes and has us giving them another shot on our devices.
In a new update — available now on Google Play — Swype can now suggest entire multi-word phrases when typing. We gave it a try and it seems to be largely based on your sentence history, so give it some time before you start seeing these appear as a prediction. Another cool feature is predictive number entry, allowing you to simply tap on the any key where numbers are secondary characters, and Swype will offer a suggestion in number form. For instance, tapping “ejqp” will suggest “3:10”, or “swpp” will predict “$200.” Pretty intuitive.
After introducing emoji back in February, Swype finally has a new and improved emoji keyboard to go along with it. This is where you’ll be able to browse all sorts of emoji, with a clean and smooth UI that will help you get your point across without using actual words. They also mentioned better Chinese language support and brand new Star Trek themes which can be purchased individually for $2 each, or a character pack for $7. There’s also a handful of other themes added, so make sure you browse through their store and take a look.
Swype is available right now on the Google Play Store in either free (trial) or paid ($1) varieties. Give it a download using the Play Store link below.
[Nuance]