Which of these keyboards have the biggest keys when using the phone in portrait mode; the android keyboard, the ime mod keyboard or better keyboard? I am looking for one that makes it less likely for those of us with fat fingers to fat finger what we are typing.
Um, i'd have to say Smart Keyboard Pro with the HTC Skin has the biggests keys. And it's not as big of a file as the HTC IME mod so there isn't that much lag when using it
come keyboards i have used
There is a keyboard called thick buttons which resizes the keys as you type making the keys that are most likely the next letter in the word larger and the rest smaller, you can also set the resize rate (small,medium, large)
SwiftKey is a pretty cool keyboard that scans your chat history to try to predict what word you will type next. They keys are pretty much the same size as the htc keyboard though. feature updates to the app will be able to scan sms, twitter, email and then create different recommendations based on the app you are typing in i.e. sms, email, or twitter.
Right now my fav keyboard app is touchpal. Don't be afraid that a lot of the text about the app is in chinese in particular parts of the tutorial they board can be set to english and all your txt recommendations will be in english. This keyboard has three layouts (my fav is the compact keyboard which gives you two letters per key but with txt prediction enabled typing is not a problem. they keys in this layout are pretty big to making it hard to miss the one you want) What is really cool about this keyboard is the ability to swipe either side ways to change keyboard layouts or down to access the secondary key (e.g. swiping down on say e will give you a 3) or in full quwerty keyboard swiping up gives you the capital letter of the letter.
Another keyboard you might want to put on your radar is blindtype. It is not out yet but it looks really awesome. It functions similar to swype but instead of swiping your finger across the keys you type normally. Look it up and you can see videos of it being demoed. It is not aval right now though but it looks like the keyboard to have for us with big fingers lol
blindtype DOES look amazing!
cant wait for it.
umm, it does not show up in my market. wth
you might want to check out ultra keyboard it allows you to re-size the keyboard making it bigger or smaller and it also has incorporated swype style typing and it also allows you to use better keyboard themes it's a paid app but in my opinion well worth it
been using big buttons keyboard for months. since i only type one handed in portrait this works perfect. it's laid out different but within a minute of typing im a pro.
itrackit said:
umm, it does not show up in my market. wth
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Click to collapse
No offense if you looking for blindtype they said in the post its not in the market. Don't feel bad I didn't completely read it the first time
Sent from Froyo 2.2 Super Hero
This is a thread for people testing TouchPal's beta. This is not an "applying for beta" thread, if you don't have it installed, you're in the wrong place.
From my PM, I got the following:
----------------
** Feedback **
The main goal of having beta testing is to collect valuable feedback. Your feedback is important to us! To submit your feedback, please email to (removing address to prevent spamming).
Besides TouchPal Keyboard, TouchPal Dialer is another app that helps you find contacts quicky in T9 keypad, display caller location, and much more. Search "TouchPal Dialer" in Andorid market and it is free!
Again, sincere thanks from TouchPal team!
Best regards,
Jessica Wu
TouchPal
-----------------------------
Personally, I'm having some luck emailing Jessica (and got a reply), but also having a lot of bounces. I'll try to get a note through to CooTek that I started this thread.
I'll post my email & reply in a moment.
oops - double posted. sorry.
What I sent earlier today:
Only been playing around 30 minutes, so will try to send a longer one after using a few days, but some quick thoughts:
- I kept typing "This is a test" to see if the keyboard would learn. I know on Swiftkey (which I own) that the first time I type it, it's the default next time (ie, when I type "This" then "is" "a" "test" will all be top suggestions in that order.
On TouchPal, the word "Test" didn't show the first couple times, then it did show on the right, and slowly moved to the left of suggestions - so I think it's learning. I don't know how the settings are, but might need some tweaking.
- With tracing turned on, you obviously can't slide down on letters to get alternate symbols But holding down works just fine. Likewise, with tracing on, you don't get to see the predicted next word until you hit a space.
The problem with that - with tracing keyboards I usually do trace-trace-trace, never hitting the space bar. Spaces are auto-entered. To get the next-word predition, I have to do trace-space (see if the word I want is on the list & if not go back to tracing). I'll have to try this for a few days, but right now it's faster to just trace the next word I want then hit the space & see if the word I want is up there.
On, with tracing on, no idea how to change keyboard layouts.
- Toolbar area, please change the buttons. Make the language one be settings with one click & language with 2 clicks. I don't need another settings button where words will be. Likewise, I don't need a tutorial button there. I do like the middle buttons for cut/copy/arrows. Maybe a button to turn tracing on/off or change layouts?
- Percise mode. One of the BIGGEST things I use in SlideIT is the ABC/Sliding button so I can turn off tracing and go to exact input. Very useful for web page addresses, user name, password, names - anything where you temp. need your exact clicks. Maybe make your TouchPal symbol a toggle to turn this mode on & off.
- Is it me, or is the bottom left A/Book button the same as the Shift button?
===========================
The reply:
Thanks for the feedback! Here're some quick response:
On TouchPal, the word "Test" didn't show the first couple times, then it did show on the right, and slowly moved to the left of suggestions - so I think it's learning. I don't know how the settings are, but might need some tweaking.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please note that in the example, "a" is followed by "test". There are many possible words after "a", so inputting "a test" for once doesn't necessarily mean you will have "a test" in the next time. If "test" is promoted too fast, this would be a disturbing option. If you try some other combination, such as "This is a quick test", I believe "test" will be immediately promoted after you input "quick".
The problem with that - with tracing keyboards I usually do trace-trace-trace, never hitting the space bar. Spaces are auto-entered. To get the next-word predition, I have to do trace-space (see if the word I want is on the list & if not go back to tracing). I'll have to try this for a few days, but right now it's faster to just trace the next word I want then hit the space & see if the word I want is up there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's true. Because we need to give you an option to change the traced word first.
On, with tracing on, no idea how to change keyboard layouts.
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Click to collapse
Slide from the toolbar button, such as shift key.
- Percise mode. One of the BIGGEST things I use in SlideIT is the ABC/Sliding button so I can turn off tracing and go to exact input. Very useful for web page addresses, user name, password, names - anything where you temp. need your exact clicks. Maybe make your TouchPal symbol a toggle to turn this mode on & off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You do have such a toggle button on the left-bottom-corner with A and a book (indicating dictionary). Is it not obvious enough? Do you have a better suggestion?
My verdict.
I like it but currently swype is better.
Improvements
* the ability to add words to dictionary by manually typing it.
* Auto correct is to sensitive. A slight delay when typing gives you an extra letter. swype is smoother.
* auto capitalisation after fullstop
* symbols done the usual way, its a nice idea but annoying when having to scroll through pages, try to add more on each page.
to be honest i thought i would type this with TouchPal so i could see bugs whilst typing, and I'm starting to like it. autocorrect the only annoyance
Swyped from my MIUI Galaxy S II
dh2311 said:
* the ability to add words to dictionary by manually typing it.
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Click to collapse
As far as I can tell, it already does that. Type a word (no matter whether you are in dictionary mode or not), and next type you are typing it it will suggest the word. Or when swiping it next time, it will also come up.
My comments:
I agree with most of the things that are posted here. I had one crash of touchpal today, it occured while i tapped and hold the backspace key to get rid of a few lines of text. Touchpal closed and didn't give me an option to send a crash log, unfortunately. Tried it a few times more, and sometimes when "backspacing" a lot of text, it will crash. Pretty reproducible.
I just don't completely understand the dictionary button, I don't find a difference in behavior whether it's turned on or off?
And when clicking a word (that was a mistake), it would be neat if other suggestions would come up so you can easily correct it, like swype does.
Thusfar, I think SlideIT (my normal keyboard) is better. My big thing is wanting the next word suggestion but I can't see an easy way of doing it and suggesting fixes for the Slide.
My only thought so far would be to split the suggestion line and make the first 2-3 suggestions fixes for the current word and then the next 2-3 words suggestions for the next word. Color code them so you know which are which.
I suppose you could also do two lines and let the user decide which one or both they want to see.
I will keep this one as my default for at least a week to see how it goes. I've found some other differences that would require adjustment. Spacing particularly going from single taps to tracing and back seems to be a bit inconsistent.
For a beta version, it's running pretty smooth. Suggestions and improvements can always be added
I was trying to type 'sim' today and it absolutely would not let me. When I hit the s key, it typed an a. No amount of tweaking would work. If I managed to get the s to work, I'd type an i and then tried to type the m, but it automatically inserted 'sin', and would not let me type 'sim'. Very frustrating.
Plus, there is a typo - I can't find it now, but somewhere the word 'editing' is misspelled 'editting' (two t's).
That reminds me - any way to remove a word entered by accident?
This app makes me miss Ultra Keyboard, wonder how he's doing. That was the one that tried to cram in every dang option from every keyboard out there. I seem to remember that the tracing was pretty bad at getting the correct word, but sure had a lot of options. Don't think it had next word prediction though.
This is my review I posted on reddit
Here is my review after ~1 hour of playing with it
I know I can come off as bashing this, but I'm not. I'm just giving my honest, personnal impression of this beta. I'll also be comparing it to swype only since it's its main competitor
PROS
- The install was flawless (no registration or anything for now). Swype is annoying for this, particularly when it fails to generate license or w/e. Flashing new roms regularly on my phone, I've had a good share of failed installs of swype. Pain in the ass to remove as it's usually a system app (not uninstallable without Root explorer/Titanium Backup/etc.)
- I haven't seen crashes/bugs
- It has been fully responsive without a hint of slowdown unlike swype (sometimes I get a slight lag on swype)
CONS
- I couldn't find the "blank keyboard" shown in the video. I'm thinking it was just a way for them to show you can type blind with the keyboard
- The predictions are pretty bad for short words (2-4 letters). Swype is also not so great at this, but usually better
- The default dictionary seems like it needs much more training than swype. I frequently flash new roms on my phone and usually I barely have to train swype to get to a satisfactory level when typing. This wasn't the case. I'd say swype predicts correctly about 70-80% of my words out of the box while Touchpal is probably around 50-70%.
SWYPE VS TOUCHPAL
Here is some unscientific tests I did with a few sentences with both keyboards out of the box. Using "swype" method and not tapping amongst the suggestions (letting the keyboard pick its best guess)
"Why are you so mad?"
* TOUCHPAL: Whiff ate youtube sop mad?
* SWYPE: Why are you so mad?
"Reddit is the place to be"
* TOUCHPAL: Reaffirm its the place to be
* SWYPE: Freddie is the place to be
"This is a test of an android keyboard"
* TOUCHPAL: This its the testy of android keyboard
* SWYPE: This is a test of an android keyboard
"Let's do one more test for Reddit"
* TOUCHPAL: Lewis dull one mower test for restitution
* SWYPE: Let's do over more test for refit
TL;DR
Promising but swype still far "better". I'm hoping for improvement as I hate Swype installation.
i agree with what you say, TouchPals correction is poor, tries too hard to find what you're trying to say, shouldn't try to lengthen words, just ends up guessing words that begin around where you started. its a good idea but flawed by its predictions. shouldn't go longer than amount of letters you stopped on
Swyped from my MIUI Galaxy S II
Quick questions:
Is it me or with tracing on, is there a way to quickly change keyboard layouts (from full keys to TouchPal+ to T9)?
Is there a way to do tracing while in TouchPal+ mode (2 letters per key)?
After using this for a while, I agree with a lot of the comments here.
1. The auto-correction is too sensitive. Always giving me words that I am NOT often using even as I swype over and over again.
2. I cannot seem to swype words like "Haha" "Hehe" "Lol". Can't even seem to add them to dictionary. It never seems to learn that I like to use those words often.
3. I set my Keyboard Layout in Portrait to FULL QWERTY. When I am on an active telephone call and I want to use the keyboard, it will auto switch to 12-Key PhonePad for me.
So for now, I am still sticking to Swype app. =) Oh I hope there's a quick way to tap the to have a smiley inserted immediately rather than tapping that Smiley > Going into a Smiley Menu > Tap a Smiley. Swype can do it it in one tap of a button.
Currently reinstalling after a reflash earlier but i've got to say what stood out the most (negative) was the desire to lengthen words. I understand that its a great feature to type "ackn" and get "acknowledge" but so many times i'm trying to write something simple and the first suggestion will always be much longer and obscure (can't remember the one earlier for "hey").
Maybe some sort of gesture to let the keyboard know you're trying to write a longer word using less keystrokes? I don't know how many words start with double letters, maybe a quick double tap on the first letter before sliding? Trying to think of situations where that would be worse than what we're experiencing.
Given that this is a phone/tablet keyboard and most users right now are on phones using this for texting and/or quicker e-mails, I think you are more likely to see people simplifying their speech automatically rather than trying to swype a really long word like "got it" instead of "acknowledge"
Will post more meaningful thoughts when I get a chacne to play with it some more
2 things that really bug me:
- not able to correct a word when i tap on it. have to delete the whole word and re-swipe it.
- not able to input custom words.
yeah.. tried to send feedback via the email they gave and it bounced back twice. :l
TouchPal, it was doing great until it comes to learning new words. The promotion system sucks as the word I really use often move very slowly to the blue recommendation box. For those who are fast typist, use super simplified words, this app is not meant for you. Its a damn slow learner. But can be fixed if they implement SMS learning in it. Plus, if I edit some existing word, it will just create another new word, without taking the existed word into account. Even if I just want to add an -es into it.
Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA App
Really annoying to hit space after every word. Especially with a small space bar. Need continuous swyping!
Samsung Captivate using XDA App
No french dictionnary
thanks for adding me to the beta team.
i could use it for daily use if the german dict would also be released. so i only can test a few sentence because i only use english 5% of my typings.
a must have for me also is a configurable smiley button. want to change some smilies.
the thing i also miss is: when typing some words, and you want to correct a word typed 3 words before, that you put the cursor somewhere into the word and get the correction list as in smartkeyboard pro.
i would also like to see the cursor arrows all the time like in smartkeyboard pro. optionally.
sent from my SGSII via T*patalk
I'd like to add this in case any Epic 4G users happen to read. I found that TouchPal affected my hardware keyboard by making the 'fn' and 'shift' keys lose their functionality. I was unable to capitalize letters and make symbols with it. Was fine before I installed TouchPal, and it was fixed after I uninstalled TouchPal. Tried re-installing it several times to see if it was just a mishap, but after 6 times the problem was always there.
Current build is Froyo 2.2.1, [EC05]SyndicateROM Frozen 1.2, Twilight 1.1.1 Kernel.
Other than that, some very nice features. Love the up/down slide on keys for capital letter/number/symbol shortcut. Would love if a future version had full text shortcuts when pressing they key and scrolling up, down, left or right. For now though, no go. I need my slide-down keyboard :3
This is a must try app. I've tried every keyboard there is and this is my favorite. It has 27 themes, several different layouts including some split ones. I download the tablet version and it really is awesome on the note. Give it a try if you haven't yet
From the Beast : Galaxy Note
+1 for Thumb Keyboard - if you want a quick typing experience on your huge screen, this is the way to go! I've been using it ever since on my 1st Android device till now and has recommended it to every person.
This has always been my keyboard of choice for tablets and it is now my keyboard of choice for the Note. Although there still seems to be a bug that double clicks some letters when you only click them once. Not sure why that happens but its been on going for over a year. Maybe its just how i type
bought this for my tablet
I bought this for my newly squired (el cheapo) tablet. It is a godsend. I hated typing on that thing, and now it is easy. I used to have to use a USB keyboard, but now I can use the screen when required.
I love the ability to change the layout on orientation, and to up the height of the spacebar row, since my (el cheapo, did I mention that?) tablet is unresponsive on the bottom edge making the stock keyboard impossible to use in landscape. This one solved that magnificently
hello, how come swipe does not work for symbolic and numeric keys?
I also found that swpie does not work when running two apps side by side. Is this a bug?
Which two apps, which one is active and what style of keyboard are you using at the time?
As for symbols, I've never done swiping when using symbols so I have no idea. My first reaction to your initial question was "Is swipe using symbols even supposed to work at all? Given that swipe is a form of predictive text input how would the keyboard predict anything if you're not spelling words since it's all symbols?"
I can't use Swpie on numeric keys as well. Why swipe needs to be predictive? I use Samsung's virtual keyboard which came with the Note Pro? I don't remember the two apps. Will let you know latter.
hajime_android said:
I can't use Swpie on numeric keys as well. Why swipe needs to be predictive? I use Samsung's virtual keyboard which came with the Note Pro? I don't remember the two apps. Will let you know latter.
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I'm going to go out on a limb here because I primarily use stock keyboards on my Nexus 4 and this tablet. It's been a few months since I've used other keyboards such as Swiftkey which also supports swipe input . . . In any event my understanding of swipe input based on the keyboards that I have used is this: the keyboard application analyzes the locations that your finger is stopping at and the directions in which your finger moves from each stopping point in order to predict the word that you are attempting to spell. The word that you are attempting to spell has to be in the dictionary of the language you have the keyboard application set to. If it isn't, the keyboard will not recognize the word and will therefore not predict it.
As an example; on both my phone and my Note Pro I have the keyboard language is set to English US. If I attempt to swipe the letters X-Y-L-E-C on the keyboard, which is just jibberish and not a real word in the english dictionary, the keyboard will not recognize this swipe pattern as a word and will attempt to predict something completely different (my tablet writes the word "clef" instead).
So what I'm saying is, how would the keyboard application know to string together a particular order of special characters?
Your answer is likely to be that it should know based upon where you pause with your fingers and you're right except that this isn't exactly how swipe was designed. Swipe is meant to allow you to minimize how long you need to pause. If you start at the letter T, swipe down rapidly to H and rapidly change direction towards E you need not stop exactly on the E key in order to have the keyboard predict the word "THE".
Thanks. I am using the stock Samsung virtual keyboard (US English) that came with the PRO 12.2. Trying to input things like muzzy996 using swipe does not work.
Yeah, it's working as intended.
What irritates me about the stock keyboard is unlike Swiftkey it does not seem to allow for addition of a word into the dictionary easily and there is no obvious way to manage the dictionary.
This is really bothersome for me because in my writing for work I often use technical terms that are not in the default dictionary and I use these terms frequently in documents or emails. The predictive nature of the keyboard does not seem to learn my frequently typed words well at all.
I've just switched back to Swiftkey and will probably try using that for a bit to see if I like it more than the stock keyboard.
Which version of SwiftKey of you use? Mine is SwiftKey Tablet 4.4.6.275. Swipe (called flow in SwiftKey) does not work. It seems that they have version 4. Worth to upgrade?
I was using version 4.4.6.275. I believe they unified versions now, I'm not using the one for tablets (which I believe is now marked as legacy in the play store). In any case I have switched back to stock. SwiftKey is buggy when multi window is used. Often times the keyboard vanishes when typing in a window. Hopefully they fix this but I'm not sure when they will, I see posts about it in their support website that are a few months old.
Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk