We’re huge fans of SwiftKey, the Android virtual keyboard which appears to use some kind of mind-melding to predict what word you’re going to type, and the good news is that it’s about to get even better.
The new SwiftKey 3 Beta has been released to the company’s 30,000+ VIP users for testing, with the big news being the space bar – or rather the fact that it no longer needs one.
The smartypants Smart Space feature now detects and corrects “mis-typed or omitted spaces across whole phrases,” so you don’t need to hit the space bar any more (even though they’ve included one, just in case).
Tech site Engadget has had an early hands on and say that they stopping using the space bar completely after a few hours in their smartphones, so this looks to be an indispensible upgrade.
Scroll down for the video and press release:
Next Generation Auto-Correct; SwiftKey 3 Beta Launches
A major leap forward in touchscreen typing
Beta release available to SwiftKey VIPs at http://vip.swiftkey.net
LONDON, April 4, 2012: SwiftKey 3, the latest-generation of the award winning keyboard app for Android devices, is now available as a free beta release to SwiftKey’s passionate community of over 30,000 VIP users.
SwiftKey (http://www.swiftkey.net), which recently won the Most Innovative App at the Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, has packed the latest release full of fantastic new features and updates, including:
Smart Space – a major leap forward in auto-correction technology, Smart Space adds to SwiftKey’s already cutting edge correction by detecting miss-typed or omitted spaces across whole phrases of poorly typed text in real-time. SwiftKey now offers the most accurate and complete auto-correction available on a smartphone or tablet.
Two new themes – a new theme, ‘Cobalt’, to match SwiftKey’s new look and feel, and an Ice Cream Sandwich-styled ‘Holo’ theme, as voted for by SwiftKey’s VIP community.
An enhanced UI – a much larger space bar and smart punctuation key help improve accuracy and make it quick and easy to access common punctuation.
Additional languages – SwiftKey 3 now offers support for an additional seven languages, bringing the total up to 42. The new languages are Korean, Estonian, Farsi, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian and Serbian.
New punctuation functionality – intelligent, language-specific punctuation handling (for example, spaces between words and certain symbols in French, such as ‘Bonjour !’).
In addition to these key updates, SwiftKey 3 includes core improvements such as backup of learned language data and improved options for users to customize auto-correction features.
This SwiftKey 3 Beta is only available through the SwiftKey VIP community, which new members are welcome to join now for a limited time only athttp://vip.swiftkey.net. SwiftKey’s development team will be working closely with the community to gather feedback and make improvements.
