Swype for the Masses

By  |  Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 2:05 am

One of the most essential pieces of software on my Droid is Swype, the astonishing–yes, astonishing–utility that lets you enter text by whipping your finger around the on-screen keyboard as fast as you can go. As long as your finger glides past the characters in the word you intend you’re good, and you don’t need to tap, tap, tap. But I’m one of the lucky few that the Swype folks have permitted to install the software: The company’s business model involves licensing the app to phone makers as a preinstalled feature.

Now TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is reporting that Swype will be available as a download for Android phones, starting today. Wonderful news–I don’t claim that every owner of an Android phone will find it as indispensable as I do, but I do think every Android user should try it…

 
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6 Comments For This Post

  1. Dave Zatz Says:
    June 16th, 2010 at 5:17 am

    Well… you do need something to overcome that amazingly flat Droid keyboard. 😉

  2. Yitz.. Says:
    June 16th, 2010 at 5:48 am

    will someone please release this technology for an iPhone too.. pretty please?

  3. NanoGeek Says:
    June 16th, 2010 at 6:45 am

    Unfortunately they can’t. 🙁
    Apple does not allow applications that modify universal parts of the OS like the keyboard.
    If it was released in the App Store, it would have to be a seperate application.

  4. Patrick Jones Says:
    June 16th, 2010 at 7:21 am

    ShapeWriter is another great keyboard. It uses the same “swiping” approach and has been free on the android market for a long time. I tried Swype a while back and it had some peculiarities that bugged me — can’t recall the details.

  5. Leslie Says:
    June 16th, 2010 at 7:30 am

    I agree it’s kinda cool and all. But I don’t think I’d be too giddy about it. It reminds me of how laptop mouses work and it annoys me. It’s either too sensitive or not.

  6. Ryan Says:
    June 17th, 2010 at 10:58 am

    This sounds like the perfect thing for a Cydia iPhone app.

1 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Let’s Compile an iOS To-Do List Says:
    June 22nd, 2010 at 11:06 am

    […] Swype. And voice recognition input everywhere–at least via an API that would let a company like Dragon provide it. […]