It comes with improved prediction, personal dictionary, support for more languages

Jun 20, 2012 13:11 GMT  ·  By

Today, a new flavor of Swype for Android was made available for download, with a series of enhancements meant to make typing on touchscreen displays more appealing than before.

The new Swype keyboard, a next-gen four-in-one keyboard, is meant to prove a step forward for the manner in which users communicate to one another on their devices.

It comes with a great combination of touch and voice input, as well as with the ability to learn user’s behavior and preferences over time, so that it becomes smarter each time they swype, speak, tap and write.

“Staying connected has never been more exciting as Swype provides consumers with more choice in how they input text, and now interprets a user's personal language style – ultimately providing an amazingly fast, flexible, and accurate experience,” the company announced.

Some of the new features packed in Swype for Android, which is available as a beta flavor only, include Next Word Prediction, Voice-Text Dictionary Syncing, Language Downloads, and Four-in-One Keyboard.

Through its next word prediction, which includes capabilities from Nuance’s renowned XT9 portfolio, Swype gets smarter based on historical usage, so prediction becomes more accurate with each use.

Moreover, the app now comes with a personal dictionary, so that any new word that the user enters on the keyboard would be added to that dictionary for speech and text. Moreover, the app can learn from emails, texts and posts.

All these updates are being mapped into Swype's unified language model, so that more people could immediately speak or write that same word no matter how unique or specialized.

Swype also offers support for language downloads, with over 55 of them available straight from the device.

According to Nuance, the company behind Swype, there are four input modalities that users can benefit from with the latest app version.

People can either swype from letter to letter, type rapidly while taking advantage of predictive text input powered by XT9, speak the text through a fully integrated Dragon button, or simply write letters using their fingertips.

"People use their keyboards every day in every way – so input needs to be fast and simple," said Michael Thompson, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile.

"The new Swype living, learning keyboard ushers in a new era of input, where the keyboard adapts to the users' unique way of communicating every time they swype, speak, tap or write."