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There's finally an iPhone accessory that doesn't make us jealous
The Clicks keyboard attachment turns an iPhone into... a Palm Pre?
The younger generation often gapes in disbelief when hearing that people used to have smartphones featuring actual buttons. As they evolved, manufacturers developed keyboards to cater to the emergence of text messaging. Much has changed since the early days of texting, thanks to the arrival of touchscreen smartphones — such as the iPhone — which eliminated the need for keyboards. This doesn’t mean that some don’t occasionally miss the physical sensation of typing with buttons, however, and Clicks is here to satisfy that desire, in its own awkward way.
SwiftKey Beta now lets you generate AI images right from your keyboard
Microsoft's keyboard now also supports Material You dynamic theming
While it’s a feature that many of us don’t think about frequently, your phone's keyboard is perhaps the most used tool on the device. Whether you prefer to swipe to type or tap letter-by-letter, the keyboard you choose to use greatly impacts how quickly you communicate. These days, there are several different keyboard options to suit your personal preferences. Microsoft is now taking things one step further with its SwiftKey keyboard app, integrating new features for livelier conversations. Those who are using SwiftKey Beta will be able to generate AI images right from their keyboard.
Google's new Tensor chip makes voice typing on the Pixel 6 faster than any other phone
Hopefully, the company can keep these promises
At today's Pixel 6 and 6 Pro announcement, Google detailed that the Tensor chip is enabling quite some incredible camera voodoo. But Tensor is also improving other machine-learning related features, like speech recognition. The chip is supposed to drastically improve the natural language processing for speech-to-text.
Over the years, the keyboard layout used on phones hasn’t seen a ton of change. While we’ve been introduced to plenty of new features such as swipe-typing, auto-correction, and word prediction, it's not often we see a reinvented keyboard layout. Now Typewise is looking to shake things up by doing something about that.
We've known for a while that typing in Google Assistant was coming, but it was officially announced yesterday at I/O. And now the feature is starting to show up for some users when they launch Assistant on their phones.
Google Assistant has been picking up steam since it was announced at last year's I/O. Replacing Google Now as your, well, personal assistant, this iteration has been largely more conversational than its predecessor. Besides the odd selection of features and differences between versions, one of the other hiccups with Assistant has been the constant need to talk to it. Well, not anymore.
It's no secret that we at Android Police are huge fans of AirDroid. A big part of that is because the developer is constantly updating the app with new features. So it is with the latest version, 3.2, which adds a handful of new goodies to the remote management tool. Some of these require use with an updated version of the dedicated desktop app (instead of the more popular browser version).
Compared to the early days of Android and iOS, it's amazing how good virtual keyboards have become... but that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. Long email and street addresses in particular are a pain to type in, especially outside of the browser where saved user information isn't available. If you're tired of typing out your thirty-character company email address, Texpand can help: it allows you to create customized shortcodes for longer strings of text and use them in any text field.
Human capacity for speech seems infinite, but after writing a steady stream of text messages, emails, and posts over the years, things start to get repetitive. PhraseExpress has spared Windows users sentences, paragraphs, and pages worth of mundane conversation since its release, and now the software is ready to do the same for Android.
A mobile keyboard is only as good as the number of languages it supports. Keyword: supports. The keys we press on our keyboards may seem pretty simple to get right, but sometimes manufacturers don't ship devices with everything functioning and available out of the box, including entire languages. In those cases, the sooner an update arrives, the better. So HTC is making over 40 Sense Input languages available on Google Play, speeding up and simplifying the way it can push out future updates and language packs.
Using a virtual keyboard may not feel as natural as a physical one, but it's only the worst way to input text with a touchscreen except for all of the other ones. Swype has had the most success in revolutionizing how we enter text, as all of the major Android keyboards have since introduced gesture-based typing in subsequent upgrades, but it's far from perfect. That brings us to FlickKey Keyboard. It's a sliding keyboard that, by grouping letters into square groups of nine, aims to reduce how far across the screen our fingers need to slide.
Most current smartwatches, such as the Pebble and the Galaxy Gear, serve as notification hubs for whatever smartphone is paired to them, but this limitation is something several Kickstarter projects have sought to change by effectively turning smartwatches into phones themselves. This approach doesn't address how ludicrous it is to peck out words on such a tiny screen, but Minuum, the Android keyboard that fits the entire alphabet into a single row, could just be the ideal solution. The team has released a video showing the magic in action.
Swype pioneered the use of gestures to enter words into our mobile devices, a feature that competitors have since picked up, including the keyboard that now ships pre-installed on Google's Nexus devices. Yet while Swype remains a champ at forming words out of our illegible squiggles, it hasn't been the fastest option for manually typing out words the old fashioned way. Now the app has received an update that the team promises significantly improves tap input. They've also addressed performance issues when typing out lengthy text entries and moving the cursor around to erase more specific parts of a sentence.
[New App] Quip, A Mobile Word Processor That Puts People First, Launches For Android
[New App] Quip, A Mobile Word Processor That Puts People First, Launches For Android
Traditionally word processors have tasked themselves with producing nice, printable documents. Mobile versions have followed up with the unenviable task of replicating this functionality on much smaller screens. Quip throws this entire concept out of the window, instead creating a writing experience built for the ground up for mobile devices. The team released an alpha version over the summer, but it was little more than a demo of the iOS version of the app. Now the full version is available, and it looks right at home on Android devices.
It's pretty easy to understand why typing isn't exactly an optimal experience on a smartphone. They are designed to fit in palms and come with virtual keys smaller than the fingertips used to press them. Tablets don't suffer from this problem, but they come with one of their own - a user can type speedily using the significantly larger keys, but resting their fingers on the screen for a mere second is all it takes to turn "superpower" to "sauerkraut," and suddenly that status update about whether America should get involved in Syria accumulates a different flood of Facebook comments than was expected. Dryft, a new start-up founded by a Swype co-founder (note the "y"s in place of the "i"s), looks to free tablet typists from the burden of never resting their wrysts... wrists.
Tip: The Google Keyboard For Android Supports Text Expansion, Here's How To Use It
I'm a huge fan of text expanders. Seriously, they are necessary to me. As a regular user of both Mac and Windows, I have sought out solutions on both
I'm a huge fan of text expanders. Seriously, they are necessary to me. As a regular user of both Mac and Windows, I have sought out solutions on both platforms and rely on them daily. That's why I've always felt horrified that there weren't any great options on Android. After all, mobile devices are already input-impaired, it only makes sense that we need quality shortcuts. As it turns out, such a shortcut has been under our noses for quite some time, tucked away where few would look and only available with the stock Android 4.1 (or higher) keyboard. But, thanks to the newly minted availability of the Google Keyboard on the Play Store, it's time to call out this great little feature.
We generally have a rule at Android Police HQ: we don't post about Kickstarter/Indiegogo projects at least until they've been funded. Too often things turn into vaporware and people's money ends up wrapped up in things like Diaspora that never take off. Today, we're making a rare exception to talk about Minuum, because this video starts off as "Oh, that's kinda cool," and quickly shifts to "Holy crap, that's amazeballs!"
The Pebble sure wasn't the first smart watch, but it's been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact, wearable computing as an industry is seeing a bit of a resurgence in general. The trouble, at least as one company sees it, is that smart watches require you to already have an expensive phone. That's two batteries you have to keep charged! Craziness! That's where the Neptune Pine comes in.
There are no shortage of keyboard replacements on the market. Between SwiftKey, Swype, and the various manufacturer-skinned versions, you can't help but have three or four options on your phone. Today's latest entrant, iKnowU, still manages to stand out with the ability to predict entire phrases and highlighting of the next letters it thinks you're going to type. Pretty impressive.
SwiftKey 3 Is Now The Top Paid App In The Play Store, Company Is Unfazed By Google's Fancy New Keyboard
Swiftkey 3 recently arrived on the Play Store, and not too long afterwards, the company has posted a statement on its blog letting us know that the app
Swiftkey 3 recently arrived on the Play Store, and not too long afterwards, the company has posted a statement on its blog letting us know that the app is currently the best-selling paid app on the Play Store. Not too bad, SwiftKey! Of course, the biggest challenge is ahead, as Google announced yesterday that, from Jelly Bean onwards, the default Android keyboard will attempt to predict your next word. Which smacks just a little of SwiftKey's pitch.