Swype Beta sweeps out account requirement

Swype, don't type

If your Android phone manufacturer or carrier didn't install Swype on your phone, there are many good reasons to install it yourself. After climbing over a very low learning curve Swype is the fastest way to enter text on a phone, and it beats standard keyboards on tablets too.

There are similar keyboard apps, but Swype is free.

Swype works offline, its handwriting input doesn't require internet either, so the only reason to allow Swype to go online is for voice input.

Don't register, just download

A major annoyance of Swype used to be that if it didn't come preinstalled, you had to sign up for the beta test program. Making yet another account somewhere just to install a keyboard? Ugh! Fortunately Swype has seen the light, so now you can download and install Swype Beta without signing up to anything.

Swype still won't let you download its keyboard directly, though. Instead it hands out a Swype installer, which downloads the keyboard to your phone and gets it installed. If your phone came with Swype preloaded, the Swype installer will add an extra copy to your phone. This new extra copy usually has more features than the Swype app (if any) that came with your phone out of the box.

You can firewall the installer offline after it has done its job. You can even uninstall the installer, the keyboard stays where it is and keeps working. Of course you can force the Swype keyboard itself offline with a firewall (after downloading language packs, of course). Keeping Swype offline kills the voice text entry part of the app, but it also ensures that the passwords and credit card numbers you Swype into your Android apps won't leave your phone through Swype. You may also want to use apps like PDroid or LBE Privacy Guard to make sure Swype Beta doesn't grab your location info.

Can't read you, don't speak your language

The app is called Swype Beta for a reason. Typing and swyping works really well, but the handwriting feature is erratic, especially for languages with accented letters, tildes, and other symbols that the english language does without. Inserting foreign words into an english text is a sure way to confuse the handwriting mode of Swype. Even when I stick to plain english, Swype often chokes on my handwritten letters that Google Gesture Search has no problems with.

Swype can only use one language at a time. It would be nice if a future version of Swype would cater for bilingual Swypers by letting them activate multiple languages simultaneously. In the current modus operandi Swype runs into trouble when you mix languages, and the autocorrect option turns your multilingual writing into a complete mess. Exempli gratia, a ménage à trois between english, french, and español is very fehlerhaft in Swype. Swype, if you want world domination you should fix your language issues today rather than mañana, capiche?

Another annoyance (one that keeps me using the old preinstalled copy that came with my phone): the current version of Swype Beta rings a very loud beep when it doesn't recognize a word, and there's no way to switch this noise off short of putting your entire phone in silent mode.

Anyway, even with these shortcomings Swype is one of the best touchscreen keyboards out there, so give it a shot.

• Swype Beta

Another good keyboard (too bad it doesn't Swype):

• MultiLing Keyboard

MultiLing Keyboard for your special characters and nose jobs

When it comes to Android keyboards it's hard to beat Swype, but sometimes an alternative keyboard is useful too.

For example, highlighting and inserting with pinpoint precision is a lot easier with cursor buttons, and the Swype keyboard doesn't have 'em. On many phones the enter key turns into a smilie button when you fire up the stock SMS app, so switching keyboards is the way to put line breaks in your text messages.

Edit: Swype has cursor buttons, but they can be hard to find. Swype from the Swype key to the SYM key to make 'em show up.

GO Keyboard did a pretty good job, but I trashed it when I found MultiLing Keyboard.

MultiLing Keyboard does not ask for internet access, which is a very good thing for an app that can see any password you tap into your phone.

It comes with cursor buttons, of course. Its unique selling point is that it makes it really easy to enter special characters like ¿¡~°£ etcetera. You can even tell it which special characters to pop up when you long-press the period and comma keys. And it lets you decide for yourself if smilies should be noseless or not, as in :) vs. :-).

• MultiLing keyboard

Android keyboard TouchPal free for the time being

Don't like the stock keyboard that comes with Android? No problem. There are plenty of other keyboards to choose from.

A bit of SlideIT, Swype, and SwiftKey

What do you get if you crossbreed SlideIT with SwiftKey? The new keyboard on the block is called by the cheesy name TouchPal. It's been around as a private beta test version for a while, but now everybody can grab a copy from the Android Market. There are many good reasons why you should, and only a few why you shouldn't.

TouchPal is like Swype, but with a couple of extras. The Swype gestures in TouchPal are called Curve. On top of its Swype-like input, TouchPal comes with a bunch of predictive text and auto-correct options and it can auto-complete unfinished words. Sometimes it's a bit too much, though. TouchPal insists on auto-capitalising the first word in a line even when you don't want it to. Worse, it inserts spacing between words even if auto-spacing is switched off. If you try to type www.google.com TouchPal turns it into www. google. com, with spaces!

If you don't like Curve you can turn it off. You can also switch to an old skool T9 keypad.

Languages, dictionaries, spelling

You can download dictionaries in most western european languages (and thai, chinese, russian, and indonesian too), but eastern europeans and most asians are left out. And it only has american english, not british. Maybe TouchPal will add more languages over time. You can add your own words to a custom dictionary to fill in the gaps.

A nice touch is that you can use multiple languages together, so if you're bi- or trilingual you don't need to switch languages in the settings all the time.

Bells and whistles

More good stuff: there's a "close" button in the top right corner so you can hide the keyboard with a single tap. That beats long-tapping the menu key or hitting the highly unpredictable back button. The virtual cursor keys are great as well. They make it very easy to put the cursor in exactly the right place, no matter how fat your fingers are.

You get quick access to the screens with numbers, special characters, and smilies. There's also an option to put alternative symbols on the normal letter buttons, which you can then insert by either long-tapping or a downward swipe. Unfortunately TouchPad only displays the extra characters on the bottom row in Curve (Swype) mode. The other keys have numbers and special symbols as well (just long-tap and see what happens), but the TouchPal keyboard fails to show them. According to the developers that's because downward swipes on the top two rows conflict with Curve. Maybe they should look a bit harder for a solution. While they're at it, they should add a page with letters like å, ß, ç, á, è, ñ, ø, š, ô, ü, etc.

Permissions and pricing

TouchPal asks for access to your contacts so it can add the names in your address book to its dictionary. It also wants full internet access, something that keyboard apps should never ask for. Apps like TouchPal can read everything you type, including passwords and credit card numbers. Better keep TouchPal offline with DroidWall or LBE Privacy Guard. Don't worry, blocking internet access does not break TouchPal. You can still download additional languages, because TouchPal launches the Market app for that.

TouchPal is available for free on the Android Market until the 31st of October, 2011. After the freebie period TouchPal will probably become a paid app, and judging from the price of the Windows Mobile version it won't be cheap. The free version never expires, so grab a free copy while you can.

• TouchPal (Android Market)
• TouchPal (cootek.com)