One of Android's best and most oft-overlooked features is its ability
to switch out the default keyboard for an alternative. These come with
extra, innovative features and are a vast improvement on the stock
keyboards.
There are hundreds on the Play Store, too, and you can
change keyboards until you find one you like. With this in mind, we've
selected nine of the best keyboards available on Android devices.
But
before you download them, it's a good idea to work out what sort of
typer you are. Some people love swanky swipe interfaces, whereas others
feel more comfortable with more tactile traditional keyboards. On top of
those are some really odd keyboards which do something a little
different.
Switching
between the various keyboards can be a bit of a pain, but if you tap
the menu key on your device, choose "Settings" and then go to "Language
& keyboard" you'll be able to choose which ones are active, and
which one is currently set as the default.
Smart Keyboard
Smart Keyboard
doesn't include any gimmicks such as predictive phrases or swipe-based
typing, but it's a solid and substantial offering nevertheless. There's a
free trial available on the Play Store, and the only difference between
this and the full version (£1.96) is an occasional nag screen to annoy
you into buying it.
A really nice feature of Smart Keyboard is
the ability to adjust the height of the keys. With other keyboards this
is done with some pre-defined defaults, but Smart Keyboard uses sliders
for an infinitesimal degree of customisation. This means you can have
nice big keys if you struggle to see or hit standard ones, or really
small ones if you want to increase your screen's real estate.
Smart
Keyboard ships with an iPhone-style keyboard by default, and it works
just as well as Apple's sleek and fluid option. There are other options
for specific devices such as HTC or Galaxy smartphones, as well as
standard Android offerings.
If you really want to get your hands
dirty it supports an open-source keyboard format which means you can
create your own, and even use these with other keyboards. Download this if... You want big or small keys Avoid this if... You don't like gimmicks Verdict: 4/5
Adaptxt
If there was an award for best-looking keyboard, Adaptxt
would win it hands - or fingers - down. Its spacious and airy layout
and translucent graphics make it look and feel like something you'd find
on a premium laptop - albeit in a virtual form.
Adaptxt also
includes a handful of incredibly useful features. At the time of writing
the Olympics are about to begin, and typing sports-related keywords
lights a lightbulb icon at the bottom of the screen which takes you
straight to the relevant Wikipedia page. There's also an incredibly
handy option to post whatever you're writing straight to Twitter or
Facebook without having to launch the relevant apps, which is great if
you're midway through a witty text or email.
On top of that
there's the ability to remove accents and diacritics, which add extra
characters to text messages - something we naively didn't realise.
Adaptxt
is an innovative and super-smart keyboard, and one of the best we've
come across. There's even a private mode so certain words and phrases
won't be stored in its dictionary, making it ideal if you share your
phone or tablet with someone else. Download this if... You want an innovative, good-looking keyboard Avoid this if... You hate new things Verdict: 5/5
SwiftKey
SwiftKey
has been our default keyboard for many years, and it's just got better
and better. Its unique selling point is its ability to predict what
you're about to type based on previous emails, texts, Facebook updates
and Tweets, and it works remarkably well. In fact, it's almost spooky in
the way it works out what you're about to type next.
The result
is that you barely even have to try to type, and you soon realise that
most of your communications consist of a few key words or phrases. It's
astonishingly quick for exactly this reason, although we can understand
some people's reluctance to let the software sift through all your
private emails and texts.
There are a few problems, notably one
with the Chrome browser which is being worked on at the time of writing.
It also only comes with a handful of skins and the layout can't be
customised. There's a dedicated tablet version of SwiftKey, but this has
to be bought separately on the Android Market.
Somehow, though,
Swiftkey is still out favourite keyboard, if only for the fact that it
makes entering text on a wee screen so incredibly easy. Download this if... You want fast, accurate text input Avoid this if... You don't like the idea of it looking through personal data Verdict: 4/5
TouchPal
Like SlideIT and Swype, TouchPal
incorporates a swipe-based interface on top of the standard keyboard.
This one includes a nice sparkly trail animation when you swipe, making
it look more like you're casting a spell in Hogwarts than typing out
words on your phone.
TouchPal's big selling point is its "Curve"
predictive text, which means you don't have to swipe out long words in
full for it to finish them. In theory this makes entering text faster,
but in practise it led to woefully inaccurate sentences: "lets" became
"let's" (annoying for grammar fiends) and "alter" became "Adler".
Better
implemented is its ability to automatically detect which language
you're typing in based on the installed dictionaries: it actually worked
well enough for a few bilingual messages.
Another nice feature
is that numbers and punctuation marks are entered by swiping up and down
on the relevant keys, rather than long-pressing them, making their
input faster and slicker. Even if the swiping was a let-down, and the
least accurate we've seen, TouchPal's other features more than make up
for this failing. Download this if... You're a bilingual emailer Avoid this if... You require decent accuracy Verdict: 3/5
SlideIT
SlideIT
takes its influence from Swype, by which we mean it completely copies
it. The swipe-based input is basically exactly the same, interpreting
your keyboard doodles into words with a fairly decent degree of
accuracy.
But SlideIt does have a trick up its sleeve to set
itself apart from its progenitor and competitor. Its clever - if
gimmicky - feature is the ability to "draw" numbers and characters on a
virtual laptop-style touchpad. It just about works, but it would be
better if it was able to capture the entire alphabet with this method.
This touchpad is also relegated to a tiny corner of the screen - we'd
like to see it take up the entire keyboard space.
SlideIT's
initial layout feels tacky and overdone, with hard-to-read "3D" keys.
Fortunately there are many alternative skins available on the Play
Store, but most are quite garish. We'd really like to see Thumb
Keyboard's extreme and intricate levels of colour customisation here.
Although we'd recommend Swype over SlideIT, SlideIT's big advantage is
that it's available on the Play Store. If you've got a device with Swype
pre-installed we'd recommend that you stick with what you've got, but
if you just want to give a swipe-interface a go SlideIT's worth trying.
Download this if... You want to swipe Avoid this if... You like a nice interface Verdict: 3/5
Swype
The
original swipe-based keyboard is still the best. It comes pre-installed
on some Samsung devices, but if you want to get it on other devices
you'll have to jump through a few hoops as it's not available on the
Play Store. Visit beta.swype.com on your smartphone, and follow the instructions there to sign up and download it.
Once
it's installed you'll find a smooth and accurate swiping experience,
which can even work out which words you're trying to input if you miss
the letters by miles. It's got a host of extra features, such as
handwriting recognition (which actually works) and well-hidden
shortcuts. Swype will also "learn" favourite words from your emails,
texts and Tweets, which means you won't struggle with unusual friends'
names or interesting spelling variations.
Speech recognition is
also included, but this is Swype's weakest feature and we couldn't get
it to pick up our vocalisations. The caveat is that Swype's in beta,
which means it may still have a few bugs, but also makes the speech
recognition failing forgivable. Download this if... You want the best swiping experience in the world Avoid this if... You're uncertain about installing apps from outside the Play Store Verdict: 5/5
Best Android keyboard: Other keyboards
Buying Guide You don't have to stick to the standard Android keyboard
Boot up GO keyboard
and you're presented with an interface that's more akin to a game than
something that's used for inputting letters. It includes the "GO
Market", where users can download new themes and hundreds of
smiley-style emoticons, known as "Emoji". Users can add special
characters and sounds to their messages, and even completely revamp
their entire phones.
Underneath all these superfluous add-ons
lies a solid keyboard, though, and one that's capable of supporting many
languages, including Chinese handwriting. It can also switch between
languages at the touch of a button, making it essential for people who
switch between English and their native tongue.
It followed our
keystrokes accurately, but predictive text is switched off by default -
perhaps to make room for the sheer amount of tie-in apps and features GO
Keyboard so eagerly promotes above the keyboard.
A nice touch is
a dedicated selection screen, which uses lovely big arrow keys to make
highlighting and copying text a doddle. All GO Keyboard's content seems
to be completely free - for now. Download this if... You're a texting teen Avoid this if... You just want a keyboard Verdict: 3/5
Thumb Keyboard
"Ergonomics"
was a big buzz word in the mid-90s, and Microsoft exploited the
crippling fear of RSI by creating a keyboard that was split down the
middle, making it easier to reach keys and type words. Thumb Keyboard
is the Android equivalent of Microsoft's keyboard, and it similarly
splits the keyboard and spacebar in two, placing the arrow keys in the
centre.
The advent of large Android tablets makes this split a
useful feature; no longer will you have to awkwardly reach across the
device to reach the "G" key. And although the layout looks a little
befuddling at first, it's surprising intuitive and fluid, especially if
you're used to using your phone in landscape orientation.
It's
incredibly customisable, too, boasting separate keyboard layouts for
different orientations, as well as the option to switch between the two.
There are also settings for specific tablets, such as 5-inch "phablets"
and vast 10-inchers.
Full colour customisation, predictive text
and the ability to create a custom toolbar round off a substantial and
useful offering, and it's nigh-on essential if you're using a tablet
device. It costs 99p whereas other keyboards are free, but that's the
price you pay for "ergonomics". Download this if... You're all thumbs Avoid this if... You've got a tiny phone Verdict: 4/5
8pen
A complete oddball amongst the standard QWERTY keyboards, 8pen
has reinvented the wheel by literally inventing a wheel. It works more
like an old school rotary telephone than a tappy or swipey keyboard, and
you must place your finger in the centre of the dial and move it
outwards to select letters and words, then back to the centre to input
them. It's completely different to any keyboard we've used before, and
rather befuddling to begin with.
Fortunately 8pen includes a
simple game - called "8pen Worldcup" - to help you get used to it. There
are also a number of tutorials to aid you in retraining your brain to
use it, and after a while we just about got the hang of it. The upshot
of this is that 8pen reckons you'll be able to type far more quickly,
but Swype still stands as the official fastest input method according to
the Guinness World Records.
8pen will divide users between those
who regard it as a mere novelty and those who actually find it useful,
and the only way of finding out which category you're in is to download
and use it. Download this if... You want to try something fresh and unique Avoid this if... You're happy with QWERTY Verdict: 3/5
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