3 ms·

>As far as I can see, nobody was actually able to use Swype, apart from people who got a Samsung phone with it preinstalled. Swype Beta has been available sinc

>As far as I can see, nobody was actually able to use Swype, apart from people who got a Samsung phone with it preinstalled. Swype Beta has been available since 2010 and could be installed on anything as far as I know. It required signing up via email and downloading an APK though. I'm not sure why they didn't publicize it more. >How come people are still talking about Swype? In my opinion, it's far superior to the native Android implementation and Swiftkey. Swiftkey Flow is a bit more responsive than Swype and I switched to it for a while to see if it could unseat Swype as my prime keyboard, but I eventually found major problems with its accuracy and predictions. I should have kept a list, there were certain words that proved impossible to enter to matter how precise the input. I also found that it occasionally (often enough to be irritating) refused to function as a "swipable" keyboard. The Android keyboard is pretty bare bones relative to both Swiftkey Flow and Swype. Both the Android keyboard and Swiftkey were lacking some very useful shortcuts present Swype for launching a numberic keypad, capitalization and text selection/manipulation.

StavrosK 14y ago
I agree with you, it just seems to me that Swype was very... unorthodox in its development. They spent years not publicizing it, the development process was opaque (not that SwiftKey is more open), etc. SwiftKey definitely has its flaws too. There are some persistent bugs that just don't get fixed. I find it very odd that companies with products so popular act as if they're abandoned.
- incision 14y ago
  I'm as puzzled as you are about exactly the same things. I think it says a lot that I was genuinely surprised when Swype finally showed up on Play. I'd written it off as forever sideloaded and not totally compatible. Likewise, I have no expectation of niggling bugs in SwiftKey ever being fixed. As I recall, both Swype and Swiftkey annoyingly expired their beta packages from time to time and both used confusing non/not-quite mobile pages for sign up and to download updates. Baffling.

StavrosK 14y ago

I agree with you, it just seems to me that Swype was very... unorthodox in its development. They spent years not publicizing it, the development process was opaque (not that SwiftKey is more open), etc. SwiftKey definitely has its flaws too. There are some persistent bugs that just don't get fixed. I find it very odd that companies with products so popular act as if they're abandoned.

incision 14y ago
I'm as puzzled as you are about exactly the same things. I think it says a lot that I was genuinely surprised when Swype finally showed up on Play. I'd written it off as forever sideloaded and not totally compatible. Likewise, I have no expectation of niggling bugs in SwiftKey ever being fixed. As I recall, both Swype and Swiftkey annoyingly expired their beta packages from time to time and both used confusing non/not-quite mobile pages for sign up and to download updates. Baffling.