Popular gesture-based keyboard Swype has won many fans on Android of late, thanks to its incredibly clever line-drawing typing system that massively speeds up text input on touchscreens.
However, there’s a growing sense that the app has lost a bit of its sparkle in recent updates – with many users on the Swype forum complaining that the keyboard’s accuracy has suddenly gone haywire in the latest builds. Users are complaining of wrong words, bad predictions and rogue spellings that won’t delete…
This may be nothing – caching issues, users resetting their dictionaries, screen calibration changes and more – but there’s a growing number of users finding the latest Swype updates a bit harder to work with for whatever reason. Something to bear in mind, at least.
Thanks to reader Simon for the tip.
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Maddog_UK
/ October 20, 2010Have to agree, latest version is all over the place.
Joni
/ October 21, 2010You might try “SlideIt”. Available in the Market and works very much like “Swype” – in fact, I prefer SlideIt, which seems to accommodate for the eccentricities of my texting technique better than Swype…
Rik Hemsley
/ October 20, 2010I was dead excited when I played with the leaked release that worked on my N1. I asked nicely for a real release and was very pleased when I was eventually told I could join the beta programme.
But the new versions are broken.
I don’t know why I’m that shocked. Maybe it’s because software is generally of a higher quality these days than it ever has been, so expectations are higher.
Gary C
/ October 20, 2010The way Swype requires so much effort when you hit an awkward word undoes all the possible time savings for me. I’m sticking with SwiftKey. It does a great job of learning your stock phrases and predicting words. Really lives up to its claims, that one.
JayA
/ October 20, 2010Can only agree with those who are experiencing issues, which is a damn shame really. Last Android device I had was the Milestone, and even with the QWERTY keyboard available I found I preferred using Swype. After jumping to a 3G S for a while, I jumped back to a Desire, and one of the main reasons was to get Swype back. But it’s pretty crap atm. So I’m working away with the stock HTC keypad, which isn’t so bad. I rotted and went to s a stock Android ROM, but the HTC keypad is way better, and there actually some features on Sense I missed, so went back. Swype still sucks, though :(
Brian Resnik
/ October 21, 2010Hey folks, Community Relations Rep for Swype here.
We’ve heard everyone’s complaints, and after a lot of work we believe to have figured out the source of the latest problems. We’re pushing the changes through our internal testing and should be able to give you more information about an upcoming fix in the near future.
It should also be noted that the accuracy issues being addressed here are primarily limited to the BETA only (which received a big update in September, including some bleeding-edge code that apparently didn’t work as well as we thought it would. Thus the BETA label, eh?). Thanks for everyone’s patience and understanding. We’ll let all of our testers know via email when the next update is ready, and everyone else can check it out around the blogosphere.
Thanks!
JayA
/ October 21, 2010Cool, I’ll look forward to the email detailing the update! :)