Swype (for Android)

Most Android users are familiar with Swype's signature input method of dragging a finger over keys instead of tapping them, a feature that has been baked into several phones. The Swype app, now available on Google Play for 99 cents (limited time price), brings this familiar feature to any Android device, but also adds a slew of other clever input methods like dictation and handwriting. It also provides smart suggestions as you write, letting you quickly finish words and sentences.

With cloud-syncing dictionaries, support for more than 60 languages, and the ability to learn from your writing and social media, Swype is a powerful app that totally changes how you type.

Writing With Swype
The main way to interact with Swype is by "Swyping"?where you drag you finger from letter to letter to spell out words. Once you complete a word, it appears in place in the text. When you next begin swiping, the app automatically adds a space between the words (this can be toggled on and off in the settings).

The word the app believes you swiped is displayed on a ribbon above the keyboard on the far left. Other words which the app believes you may have been attempting to swipe or type appear to the right. The list is extensive, and can be explored by dragging the ribbon left and right.

Typing works as you expect. With each tap of a letter, the suggestions across the top change. Let's say I'm typing the word "best." By the time I'm through "be," the word "be" is on the left as the top suggestion. "Best" is the third suggestion, so I could just tap the word and keep typing.

Like SwiftKey, Swype also displays three suggested words above the keyboard before you begin Swyping or typing. For instance, after writing "I am enjoying the hams of my ancestors" several times, Swype suggested "enjoying," "the," and "hams" after I typed "I am." This makes spitting out frequently used phrases even faster. In other words, it's content-aware, so you could simply tap the suggestions to dash through sentences.

Suggested words are a smart feature, but sometimes Swype spits out strange utterances. During my testing, I tapped the middle of the three suggestions repeatedly and the app wrote "Is it possible to have a good time for the holidays [sic]," a question I am sure many of us have asked before. In general, SwiftKey does a better job of identifying the phrases I use a lot and was more consistent with its suggestions.

Moving between all three modes of text input makes for fast, accurate typing and is the best way to use the app. However, it's hard to get used to looking at suggestions instead of the keyboard while writing. Obviously there's a learning curve before you can take full advantage of everything the app has to offer.

Dead-On Dictation
Nuance Communication, the developer behind Swype, is also responsible for Dragon Dictate for Mac and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 Premium (Windows), desktop speech-to-text software that picked up our Editors' Choice award. It's not surprising that the company chose to include a dictation capability in Swype, which it calls Dragon. To activate this feature, simply tap the small flame-like logo on the bottom left of the Swype keyboard. Speak your sentence and then tap "done" when you're finished, although you can allow the app to end dictations automatically from the settings menu.

I was immediately impressed with Dragon on Swype, which requires no tedious set up or training. Out of the box it did a pretty good job transcribing my utterances, even when another speaker was close by.? It's definitely better suited for composing shorter messages, and I also noticed it took longer than expected to process the speech to text, which requires a data connection. The Google Now search bar on my Nexus 7 transcribed my speech much faster, but a little less accurately.

With dictation more than other aspects of Swype, you'll probably end up having to correct the app a fair amount which is thankfully simple. Just tap a word and Swype's suggestions will appear on the ribbon again.

Handwriting Recognition
I thought handwriting recognition fell out of favor around the time of the Newton, but Swype has a toggle-able option to let you write with your fingertip. As you shape letters?either in upper or lower case?the lines vanish quickly as Swype collects them. You can enter text letter by letter or in entire words.

Because English is my first language, my impulse was to move left to right as I wrote. This works fine, but you'll quickly run out of space for longer words. I found the app worked just as well when I wrote the letters over each other slowly.

Annoyingly, to handwrite numbers, you have to switch between letter and number entry modes. Between that and the time it takes to write letters out, it's obvious why this isn't a central feature of the app. In fact, it's not even enabled by default.

Surprisingly, handwriting input shines for entering long strings of numbers?like a phone number.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/yHDB0fDKGH0/0,2817,2418217,00.asp

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