Tech Tip – Best Android Keyboard

I decided to start Monday off with a great tech tip for those of you who have android phones.  I was happy with the standard LG keyboard on my phone until it started adding a foreign language in and all of a sudden I was getting Asian characters in the mix every time I tried to text.  Remembering a best android keyboard recommend from Jason Southwell, I went to Google Play store and looked up the free version of SwiftKey and downloaded it.

What sets this keyboard above the others is that it understands not just patterns in your typing, but also how words work together. This makes it the best at predicting the next word, often before you begin typing it. SwiftKey keyboard gives more accurate predictions and corrections than other keyboards helping eliminate sloppy typing, or in my case dyslecic ADD typing will magically make sense, even if you misspell or miss spaces.

It’s like SwiftKey keyboard can read your mind and predicts the next word you want to type based on the sentence and your texting habits. The app has artificial intelligence,  learns your writing style and predicts the next word you want to type or a close variation. It shows its predictions in three slots above the keyboard, center is what it believes is the most likely, and the left and right spots are the runners up. This makes makes firing off quick messages a breeze, and its smart suggestions get better the more you use it. SwiftKey actually changes the way you type. For instance, if you’re frequently texting the phrase “see you soon,” those three words are more likely to appear in in the app’s predictions. Instead of typing out those 10 characters, you will see a suggestion for “see” followed by “you” followed by “soon.” I think it is pretty cool that my keyboard’s predictive text instantly recognized tacogirl and  tacogirl.com offering that as a word selections 🙂

The only con is that sometimes when you try to type a word it does not recognize yet it will automatically change your word to what it thinks it should be, this can be eliminated by touching the word you were texting in one of the above 3 slots to make it recognized.

I have not looked up what the difference between the paid and free version is but even without knowing, I would say this is one app that I would consider worth paying for and will probably end up doing so.