14 DAY TRIAL // Today, SwiftKey has announced the availability of yet another update for the beta version of its Android application, with some more appealing enhancements packed inside.
In the new release, the development team has performed a series of under-the-hood changes, while also bringing additional emoji support and changes to the optional number row.
“The changes in this latest update are mainly under the hood – we’ve focused on some performance and memory issues to improve your overall experience. This isn’t the end of the improvements we’re making so don’t worry if we haven’t fixed something you’ve flagged yet,” the team notes in a blog post.
The release notes for the new application version show that the secondary characters on the top letter row are now modified when number row is enabled.
Moreover, the emoji UI has been redesigned, now featuring new space and backspace bar, as well as swipe gestures to switch emoji tab. It also sports a series of changes to the manner in which the layout works under the hood.
As mentioned above, the new app flavor also comes with a series of fixes for various performance issues when switching between tabs, as well as for an issue where emoji still predicted even when disabled. Emoji will appear larger in the new app version, and general memory problems will no longer appear.
Other resolved issues in the new app iteration include one where Ice theme used extra RAM, one that resulted in keyboard freezes, issues when syncing, a problem with Trending Phrases not updating, and another with incorrect vibration feedback when scrolling.
“Some of you have asked us why emoji look different depending on what you’re doing. In short, what you see varies between different versions of Android and different apps. Emoji are only supported on Android Jellybean and KitKat (4.1 and later),” the aforementioned blog post notes.
“SwiftKey uses the system emoji font which is black and white in Jellybean and colour in KitKat but some apps (eg WhatsApp) render the emoji within messages with app-specific fonts whereas Google Hangouts uses the same colour emoji font as KitKat.”
You can download the SwiftKey Keyboard 4.5.0.22 beta for Android from Softpedia as well. It should be compatible with all devices running under Android 2.2 or later.