By While cruising around the showroom floor at CTIA, Rob and I came across the guys from Cootek who were showing off the upcoming release of their popular TouchPal keyboard — this time for tablets. I’ll be honest with you, I am a keyboard whore. I use about 5 different keyboard apps and switch between them every few days.
The coolest part about TouchPal for tablets, is that it combines some of the key features found in other keyboard apps but in one single package. Everything from predictive text that allows you to blind-type, swiping (with predictive text) ala Swype and new for tablets is the new “thumb keyboard” option for separating the keyboard allowing easier thumb accessibility. It doesn’t stop there, you can even shrink the keyboard and move it around for better placement or easier swiping.
You guys can check out the current version for smartphone in the Android Market right now. The Cootek devs hope to release the tablet version in the very near future. We’ll keep you posted.
I have also tried many-a-keyboards on both my phone and tablet. On my DInc, I am most comfortable with SwiftKey. The predictive text is very accurate and you can be very sloppy with your presses and it still gets it right – mostly. I have used TouchPal off and on for the past month or so but it’s not very good at swiping – no where close to Swype’s accuracy.
On my Xoom, I haven’t found any I like. The touchpal looks pretty cool so I’ll look forward to that release. Thumb keyboard is OK but you’re not always holding it like that (with both hands). I like the idea of being able to quickly switch. I tried SwiftKey but had serious lag that stopped when I stopped using that keyboard. Maybe I need to uninstall and reinstall???
The best is the ability to use a USB keyboard. That is definitely my preferred method on the xoom. Now if only LogMeIn supported external keyboards…
I just uninstalled touchpal. Finding the # charcter annoyed me one time too many.
I don’t understand how swype was sold for 100 million and how this is free.