Gadgetory

if you're not a whiz at typing on your smartphone I'm here to tell you it's probably not your fault there are dozens of factors that make typing on a smartphone a total nightmare it could be the size of the screen or the size of your hands or the autocorrect software or the spacing between the keys fortunately if you and your keyboard software aren't getting along there are some great options out there worth trying I'm gonna show you four keyboard replacements for Android that with any luck will also come out to iPhone users this fall with iOS 8 lets start with the Google keyboard one that you'll probably never see on Apple's App Store now just because you're running Android doesn't mean you're actually using Google stock Android keyboard in many cases like on this HTC One m8 you get the manufacturer's spin on the keyboard if you do nothing else look up the Google keyboard in the Play Store and give it a shot it's a free download and for a lot of people it's the keyboard to end all keyboards aside from having a nice spacing and a swipe to type option for one finger typing there are features here that Google is uniquely great at one is text-to-speech which google has been perfecting for years the quick brown fox the other is an intelligent predictive text software that minds everything Google knows about you to predict your next word it's the next best thing to a full Google brain transplant and did I mention it's free another great option out there that's free is SwiftKey this one also does a great job of tailoring its predictive text suggestions based on the access you give it to your emails and your text messages I don't know why it creeps me out more than Google's constant spying on me but at least the process is entirely opt-in SwiftKey does a lot of what Google keyboard does swipe typing predictive text custom dictionaries but what makes SwiftKey unique is that the keyboard itself can be resized to match up nicely with those sausages you call fingers just press and hold the swift key icon and you get a menu of all sorts of resizing options next up we have swipe which is well worth the 399 price tag swipe was one of the first companies to come up with a whole one finger swiping texting method and are arguably the best at it if you really want to be speedy with one finger typing this is the one and because they're owned by nuance you also get their whole Dragon Dictation software built-in which does a great job at letting you dictate your writing the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog but if the whole swipe typing thing just doesn't feel natural give flexi a shot it's 399 but this is my choice if you want to just get blazing fast at typing there's no swipe text no dictation just an insanely smart and forgiving autocorrect and the ability to move forward and backward through your sentence by flicking left and right you can mash on this thing and a wild drunken stupor and still make sense when you go full Jedi you can even make the keyboard invisible and then just trust in the force to make a coherent sentence so there you have it four ways to take your smartphone typing to the next level now instead of hunting and pecking you'll be swiping and dictating and mashing your way to a better keyboard experience