Err, SwiftKey anyone? It's been around since 2008 and even has an xkcd comic featuring it: http://xkcd.com/1068/
Haven't used SwiftKey, but from what is described in the comic, it seems that builds a Markov chain from your text.
Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
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Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#12Ok, maybe I am extremely daft but how do you turn off the voice reading out each word you type? I turned my device on vibrate/silent mode - no dice, then I tried turning the system volume down to nothing - no dice. What am I missing here?
There is no way to turn off the voice. This app is primarily designed for visually impaired people who need that feedback.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#13But you still have to type! I'll take Swype every time.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#14What's the business model on this?
In order to get the actual text out of the app into an email, sms, or onto the clipboard you need to buy a $4.99 in app purchase.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#15What's the business model on this?
They sell software - it's £6.99 for the full version.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#16I've realized that for my mobile phone the typing speed will just never be great regardless of the input method. Tools like this (and SwiftKey) improve that a bit but not to a life-changing degree. For the desktop this might be quite amazing however since, unless you're a perfect touch typist, you will always make a small number of mistakes. These small mistakes can be caught fairly easily (especially given the much…
> for my mobile phone the typing speed will just never be great regardless of the input method.
Actually, way back when PalmOS and PocketPC were all the rage, there was a company that released something called the Fitaly keyboard. I don't know what you qualify as "great" typing speed, but with this keyboard they advertise 50wpm with a stylus, I was able to achieve 60wpm after some practice.
The point is, it is definitely possible to achieve fast input speeds on mobile devices.
Admittedly it did take some practice and probably isn't great for the average consumer.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#17[deleted]
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#18I’ve been using Fleksy for about five days now. As a totally blind iPhone user this app has some promise and some major flaws. The first issue is the fact that the app takes at least 30 seconds to load on my iPhone 4 if you haven’t used it in a while. I’ll deal with the crappy typing experience using the iPhone onscreen keyboard instead of waiting 30 seconds if I’m just sending a quick text. The second issue is the inefficiency of entering custom words. If a word isn’t in Fleksy’s dictionary it’s much faster to type the word using the normal keyboard instead of with Fleksy. This makes writing technical emails or messages with lots of nonstandard words quite difficult. Since you can add words to a custom dictionary in Fleksy though I would expect this to get better with time.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#19But you still have to type! I'll take Swype every time.
While I do love my Swype (especially as, similarly to the claims made by this keyboard, I am getting close to being able to "touch type" on it), I really, really like how this keyboard looks. Just letters, no fake key edges or anything like that, I think it's a huge improvement in the usage of the space available.
There are several keyboards available for Android that just plain suck on this front, with more space taken up by their early 00s pseudo-3d button styling than by the letters. I love what Fleksy is doing here and I hope more people follow in their footsteps.
Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method
#20But you still have to type! I'll take Swype every time.