It has taken three years, but Swype is finally losing its Beta tag and has hit the Google Play store. The app is available as a free trial version that’ll work for 30 days and a 99c version, and the two builds will eventually be available as a single version sometime in the future.

But are they a bit late? While Swype was busy getting its keyboard pre-installed on Android smartphones, competing apps such as SwiftKey, SlideIT, and TouchPal were going straight to the consumers. And also the gesture typing feature became available with Android 4.2.

But the folks at Swype, which is now a division of Nuance, are not too worried. Aaron Sheedy, Nuance’s VP of Mobile Product says, “Yeah, we might be late. That’s an honest concern. But the adoption of smartphones is still just so huge, and there’s a whole generation of people just coming online. Our language coverage is such that we’ll do really well in the [international] markets; we’ve got [support for] 62 languages, plus a bunch of dialects”. And also, OEMs are still paying licensing fees on every Swype-enabled device.

So far Swype seems to be getting good reviews from users who have installed it (unlike another new app). The free trial version is available here, and here’s the 99c version. If you are going for the paid version you better make it quick as the price is expected to go up in the coming weeks.

So, have you installed it yet? Interested in some swyping and driving?

[Source]

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They have kept all the best things: the easily programmable custom dictionary, punctuation prediction, and amazing word prediction, which doesn’t only predict the word that you are currently typing, but it also has the ability to logically predict the next word in your sentence. Along with the familiar features, Touchtype has added a few extra to adapt it to the tablet and to bring the application into 2011.

This new version of SwiftKey will be a more personal experience. It will be able to analyze your online profiles — Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, your blog, etc. — and through Google’s advanced cloud-based technology, SwiftKey learns how you write and quickly tailors your typing experience, meaning it may quite literally take the words right out of your mouth. It is also multi-lingual, and can facilitate predictions in several different languages simultaneously, offering predictions in the most relevant language automatically, without the need of manual selection.

Lastly, SwiftKeys core prediction engine, Fluency 2.0, is integrated directly into the Honeycomb product allowing for a brand new prediction technique that will integrate each aspect of the typing interface process (from the first two keys pressed to the prediction of sentences), meaning no probability will be left untouched.

All of this will be delivered with a shiny new interface, where the keyboard is split into 3 sections, letters on the left, numbers in the middle and more letters on the right, emphasizing the convenience of typing with your thumbs.

Do you still need a hardware keyboard? I don’t think so.

[AndroidCentral]

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