Smartphones are incredibly useful devices, and the amount of people using them has skyrocketed over recent years. Businesses have adopted them wholeheartedly, and now making sure employees have smartphones is as essential as buying business insurance policy. It seems that accessing the internet for communication through email, social media, and instant messaging has now taken a firm foothold, and it is much cheaper than traditional voice calls. Even voice calls can be made for free using Skype, so smart phones really have everything covered.
The only problem with the transition from using a traditional personal computer and physical keyboard to a smart phone is the touch screen interface that many of them now use. Some people find touch-typing on the new on-screen keyboards cumbersome and less efficient than with a traditional keyboard. The small keys make hitting the correct letter harder, and typing at speed can result in a lot of mistakes.
The Android operating system comes with touch-typing software pre-installed, but it is by no means the best software out there. Other software developers have noticed that problem that some smartphone users have with touch screen typing, and have endeavoured to solve that problem with new apps. Different apps will suit different users, so it is worth taking a look at all of them to see which one is right for you. Installing new software to make typing on a smartphone easier cold save you a lot of time and reduce the frustration of trying to write that urgent email on your smartphone.
SwiftKey X\
This handy app is really quite clever. It’s an intelligent keyboard app that collects information about your typing style and adapts itself to suit you. Once you begin using tis keyboard app it will see what words you use the most and the mistakes you commonly make. The more you use it the better it gets at predicting the word you are planning to type, so much so that just a couple of letters can be enough for it to present your chosen word. The only downside to this app is that it’s not free, but you can use it for one month, which should be enough time to decide whether you like it or not.
SWYPE
If you have a new Android smartphone the chances are that SWYPE may already be installed on your operating system. Just check your keyboard setting to see if there is a SWYPE option. This app lets you swipe the word you want to type instead of hitting each individual key. So you just glide your finger over the keyboard and move from letter to letter. The app predicts which word you are trying to type, and its clever algorithm is pretty good at picked the word you are trying to write. If it’s not already on your phone you can download it for free.
TouchPal
TouchPal works in the same way as SWYPE, by gliding your fingers over the touch-screen keyboard to each letter of the word you want to input. However, the developers of this app are trying to improve this system by adding a host of extra features to improve it even further. Things like swiping up to type a number and swiping down for a special character, and the ability to cut, copy, and paste can be done with TouchPal. At the moment it is in its beta stage and is still free, so try it out and see what you think.
Go Keyboard
The Go Keyboard app is a great looking keyboard app that allows you to customize the layout of different keys and add characters not usually present on a standard keyboard. You can add a key for things like smileys, and change the size and position of where your keys are placed. There are also a number of different themes to choose from to add the finishing touch to your customized keyboard. It is equipped with standard features like auto-correct, and also supports slide input.
ICS Keyboard
This free keyboard app is very effective at text prediction, and also has a speech to text feature, although this is only available for some languages. Other features it has include a built-in dictionary and an auto-correction option that is customizable. If that is not enough, it allows different smileys to be selected by holding down the ‘Enter’ key, and domains to be selected by holding down the ‘/’ key. Some of the technology used in ICS Keyboard is included in the latest version of Android, but download the app if you are running an earlier version.
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About Author
Charlotte Richards works full time selling business insurance but her real passion lies in technology. In her spare time she writes freelance articles with special interest in new media and web 2.0.Similar Posts:
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