I rarely (read “never”) dedicate single post for single small thing, but this time I feel like I should do so.
Few weeks ago a friend of mine, in a conversation about Android apps, especially most essential ones like launchers, keyboards and so on, told me he is using SwiftKey 3 Keyboard and that it is really good, though you need to pay something like 3 euro for it. That time I replied that I am kinda satisfied with default keyboard in Jelly Beans and don’t see any point of changing it.
Few days ago I saw a port of Droider.ru about the same piece of software and when to read the complete review. It turned out to be so good that I went out to Google Play and downloaded the one-month-free-trial version. After install it asked me few questions on my way of typing, languages I use as well offered to give it access to my SMS/Gmail/Facebook to learn my way of communicating. Access was granted and in few minutes I was informed that things are fine now and ready to be used.
First thing I noticed is a design. Much better looking keyboard where I could easily touch any key as well as do long-tap for secondary symbols – nice. One day of normal phone use with mostly Foursquare, Instagram and Evernote where I was posting things and writing comments show me all the advantages. Not only SwiftKey 3 keyboard did well with predicting the word I am trying to type, but after pressing space (finishing the word) it was very good on a prediction for coming one. For instance, writing something like “Morning coffee” is done by typing “Mor”, selecting “Morning” as prediction, typing “c” and selecting “coffee”. Or typing “This is a nice keyboard” is done by typing “Thi”, selecting “This” as prediction, selecting “a”, selecting “is”, typing “ni” and selecting “nice”, typing “keyb” and selecting “keyboard”.
I found the layout of keys, the prediction of the text and all other features very useful and paid the small amount for such a useful thing. I don’t normally recommend things unless I really feel like I should (which is a rare case), but this time I do recommend everyone who didn’t try this nice software to go and check the trial version.
One more thing to note is that SwiftKey 3 Keyboard supports multiple languages with the same nice text prediction (at least English and Russian are fine).