SwiftKey helps you type quicker on your Android touchscreen phone by predicting what you want to say.
Setting up SwiftKey Beta is easily done, thanks to a handy start-up wizard. You'll need to download a language module from a choice of nine (see below for the full list), and enable SwiftKey as your default input method on your phone. Once you've done this you'll see a new on-screen keyboard whenever you send a message or enter text.
Keys are laid out in QWERTY format and are a bit thin for our liking. This is something that can't be customized, either. Luckily, this doesn't matter too much because thanks to the magic of SwiftKey you can afford to make mistakes when typing.
SwiftKey's predictive text engine is so powerful that it can generally guess the word you wanted within just two or three keystrokes. With every keystroke you make three possible words are suggested. You can select one by tapping or hit Space to go with the middle one, which is the one SwiftKey thinks is the most likely. There's a handy tutorial that explains exactly how SwiftKey works.
Part of the reason for SwiftKey's accuracy is that it looks at the history of your SMS messages to learn about the kind of words you use and the way you construct sentences. Of course, there are privacy concerns here, but the app is designed to scan for text only, as opposed to context.
We were very impressed with the speed at which SwiftKey lets you type. Even if you're prone to making spelling mistakes, the app is great at detecting and correcting them automatically.
