The SwiftKey Beta has just gone live on the Android Market. Put simply this is a throroughly brilliant app which will predict the next word you’re typing and, for the most part, it’ll get the word right first time after just two letters. The “Fluency” engine understands how you type, learns your words and means that prediction becomes even quicker and more accurate over time.
The app is ready to download now, so head over to the Android Market and give it a spin. We’d love to hear your comments.
Click on to see it in action..
Links – SwiftKey Beta – SwiftKey.net
Welcome to the typing revolution
* ‐ A breakthrough in text prediction for smartphones
* ‐ SwiftKey™ enables effortless touchscreen typing
* ‐ Learns as you type to give even better predictions
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — A British start‐up company today launches a pioneering new technology that is set to change the way people write on their touchscreen phones – by doing most of the work for them.
London‐based TouchType is giving away the beta of its SwiftKey™ software, which utilises patentpending language technology to predict whole words as a user types. The beta, currently available on smartphones running the Google Android™ platform, can increase
writing speeds by up to 50% with its powerful prediction engine. It was pioneered by two young entrepreneurs, Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock, who met while studying at the University of Cambridge. “We are really pleased to be able to launch SwiftKey™ Beta
after over two years of hard work,” said Reynolds, TouchType’s Chief Executive Officer.
“The incredible technology underpinning our application completely changes the way mobile users interact with their smartphones.”
Unlike old prediction technology that simply relies on word lists, SwiftKey™ uses complex language models that understand how words are combined within sentences.
“We’ve analysed over 50 billion words in nine major languages to build the models that drive our prediction engine,” said Medlock, TouchType’s Chief Technical Officer. “SwiftKey™ is the first text entry app on the market to harness the incredible power of statistical language processing. It takes predictive text to a whole new level, resulting in an unparalleled user experience.”
TouchType alpha tested SwiftKey™ with a group of over 5,000 alpha testers for six months. The feedback the company received was overwhelmingly positive. “I just typed the majority of a sentence without typing anything. It was like it was reading my mind,” one tester said.
SwiftKey™ has also received glowing reviews. “This is brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” said Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor for the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. “This is the
best predictive text I have ever come across.”
Jerry Hildenbrand, reviewer at the influential Android Central blog, said: “SwiftKey™ is like an English professor is alive and working inside your phone. It’s still in beta, but it’s already an amazing little application.”