For many, myself included, the switch from iPhone to Android was a mostly painless one. The setup process was a bit of a pain, but after that everything ran pretty smoothly. If one of my iPhone apps wasn’t available, a reasonable facsimile was.
Yet there is one thing that has continually bothered me throughout my Android experience: the keyboard. While people lament the iPhone’s autocorrect tendencies, the iOS system fit much better with my typing style than any of the available Android keyboards. Four months after switching back to Android I realize this isn’t just an iOS-ingrained typing habit. It’s just the way I type.
When I first switch people suggested SwiftKey as a solution. I’d tried an early version for Android, but didn’t like it. Perhaps the new version would provide the necessary improvements. I was elated to see one of the preferences during setup: I type fast and rely on autocorrect. Perfect.
Except it wasn’t. SwiftKey didn’t quite autocorrect the way I’d wanted. Sometimes it wouldn’t autocorrect at all. Other times it would autocorrect the dumbest things — it would routinely change “have” to “Havre,” even though I’ve never typed the latter word. Frustrated, I declined to pay for SwiftKey after the trial expired.
Today SwiftKey announced SwiftKey 4, which advertises many improvements over previous versions. Included in the improvements are autocorrect, predictions, corrections, and better adaptations. Best yet, they reduced the price from $3.99 to $1.99 for a limited time.
While I didn’t like SwiftKey 3, $2 is barely a drop in the bucket if the app makes a significant difference. I dropped the cash, and immediately set up SwiftKey. After going through the options and personalizing it, I started typing a bit. It’s been only an hour or so, but I’m happy to report that SwiftKey 4 is quite a good keyboard for Android users who switched form iPhone and like that autocorrect system better. In fact, I think that given some more time, SwiftKey 4 will prove more valuable than the iPhone keyboard by a significant margin.
There are other features, too, such as Flow, which acts in a Swype-like manner, allowing you to create words, and even sentences, without lifting your finger from the keyboard. That will take some more time, and could be a great feature if I had the desire to learn it. Bit the best part is that I don’t have to. The normal SwiftKey keyboard has grown to the point where it is bar none the best keyboard experience on Android.
At $1.99 it’s worth a shot if you’re frustrated with other Android keyboard solutions, including previous SwiftKey builds. You can get SwiftKey 4 from Google Play.
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