Symbian users Swype Samsung's tricks
The world's fastest text entry system, Swype, is now in Beta for Symbian S60 5th edition, allowing Nokia users to write by tracing a path rather than the old-fashioned tapping on keys. Swype allows text entry by tracing a finger past the keys rather than pressing them one at a time. The software recognises the pattern and …
Swype is a great text entry method. Unfortunately, it has been in beta everywhere forever... It's on Android too and is probably the only thing I'm actually willing to pay for.
In the sense that calling it a beta seems just to mean that users should expect that features may be added or radically altered without a great deal of notice, rather than that the quality of the code is lacking. The keyboard itself sounds like a good idea, I'm going to give it a try.
That said, given the article's willingness to repeat the 35 second PR froth, it'd be wrong to overlook that the same phrase was typed in less than 22 seconds on a standard multitouch keyboard in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVXyVzLjKag . The specific OS running the generic multitouch keyboard doesn't matter.
III sssstiiilll<-lll-> rrr<-p->fff<-ee->eerrr tooo uussssee thhee trrradiiitiiinn<-ooo->alll meethhoood ooofff eennteerrriiinng teexxt nn<-ooo-> a ooo<-m->bbiiilllee phhnn<-ooo->ee -- though it makes it very hard to get used to an ordinary, "one-press-per-letter" keyboard afterwards!
I tried Swype, but in the end I went for SwiftKey.
Once you get used to it and its trained for a while, I've found it to be unbelievably fast for common phrases and average on new/unusual ones.
Hooray for having the choice, though.
According to other sites Swype is coming to Symbian^3 on the N8 when *that* finally launches.
I think there's a demo on YouTube somewhere.
... steno entry. Not the "chord" keyboard thingies, silly. The handwritten variant. There's quite a lot of them so pick one that's enterable on a touchscreen and doesn't require accents and tiny wriggles and all that. The "Groote" system was designed to be usable while mounted (the guy was in the Cavalry, military buffs ought to like that). Should translate nicely to being usable to write stuff on your mobe or pad thingy while riding in a metro train or in a car or something.
I'm not sure why you'd put this on a large-screen device like the Galaxy Tab. Swype's main advantage is that it negates the inherent inaccuracy of tapping keys on a tiny touch-screen keyboard.
Dragging your finger around a much larger screen would be both tiring and tiresome.
Sign up, sign up for Blocks and Files, The Reg's weekly storage newsletter
