T-Mobile USA said today that Swype, the text input technology designed for touchscreens, is being rolled out on the new myTouch 3G and the upcoming HTC HD2. The announcement marks the second U.S. carrier and second handset-maker to support the startup’s quirky text input method.
Swype’s CEO Mike McSherry told mocoNews that the two T-Mobile handsets are just the beginning and that Swype will be preloaded on at least 10 phone in the first six months of 2010, spanning multiple OEMs, carriers, operating systems and regions.
Late last year, Verizon Wireless started selling the new Samsung Omnia II with Swype, which Samsung called “Genius Texting.” The technology, being developed by the Seattle-based company, attempts to make touchscreen keyboards easier and more accurate. A user drags their finger from letter to letter in a very fluid manner, rather than pressing each individual character.
Swype will be integrated in the new version of T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G, which is available starting today. In addition to having Swype built-in, the new hardware sports a built-in 3.5mm headset jack, updated music player and has additional memory with 288 MB of RAM. It’s conceivable that the myTouch phones sold to date could receive an over-the-air update to include Swype. T-Mobile also plans to integrate Swype into a number of future devices, including the HTC HD2, a Windows Mobile phone coming this spring.
In December, Swype received funding from both Samsung and Nokia (NYSE: NOK), indicating that the two handset makers will deploy the technology on a broad basis. With today’s announcement, there’s clearly support also coming from multiple carriers and HTC.
Just yesterday, a study released by the NPD Group found that the majority of U.S. consumers are still basing their phone-buying decision on how well the device inputs text. That has led to an increase in the number of Qwerty keyboards and touchscreens sold.
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