Input may vary
Unbeknownst to me I was greeted on my cell phone last night with a new keyboard. They apparently ran a silent update and it included this new “swype” keyboard (link from title). This is the new way of typing on your mobile that you may have seen in those sprint commercials. I for one am all for trying new methods of input and love seeing people attempting (and sometimes failing) at new methods of interaction with the devices we deal with daily.
Before getting my HD2 (which, with the minor complaints about winmo, is a phenomenal phone), I had the G1. I often used my hardware keyboard as opposed to the softkey one, probably mostly due to the heinous crack I had left in my G1 from dropping it a measly 3 ft from my desk once. When I got the HD2, I no longer had the option and was forced to use the softkey. It was hard at first, even though HTC built a great keyboard with fantastic predictive text, there were still some things that felt awkward and glitchy and didnt work like I expected. It took a few weeks but eventually I hit full tilt and could type out a text message with the best of them.
Now comes along (very abruptly I might add) Swype. It is different. You basically drag along your fingers from letter to letter and and only lift off the screen when you want to start a new word. The first 2 times I used it, it was difficult, I kept lifting up my fingers due to nearly decades of being used to typing on a keyboard. But after that second time and a quick tutorial, I must say, this is the most natural typing experience I have had on a phone yet. You literally just slide along the word, it has some great predictive text going on and it just works, and works well. Even on double letters like the word meeting, you just kind of pause or circle on the e and it throws it in for you. The only downfall is that if you for some reason brain fart and don’t remember where on the keyboard that next letter is sometimes your hand is blocking it and it can be a little diffucult, but otherwise, brilliant.
Bravo Swype, I was hesitant and kind of laughed at that Sprint commercial, but this works and works well.
