Clove Technology’s Blog

Swype is a text input method that has been in development for the last 7 years, created by the inventor of the T9 predictive text dictionary. It recently debuted on the Samsung Omnia II, and is set to be available on forthcoming Nokia and Samsung devices in 2010.

Swype is designed to make typing on touchscreens more accurate by letting users drag their finger from letter to letter rather than having to tap each individual key. The software will then decide what word you are typing based on when your finger pauses or changes direction. As the software predicts what words you are going to type, users can input roughly 40 words per minute allowing for messages to be composed a lot quicker.

So far, Swype has received good reviews from sources such as CNET and Samsung Omnia II users, but it is not the first time that a company has tried to introduce an alternate keyboard, as mentioned in this post at Android And Me. However, after a significant amount of funding (just over $7 million to date), including a substantial amount from Nokia and Samsung, it seems that Swype could be a winner.

TechCrunch stated in November that Swype would be coming to Android in early 2010, which could give it some real firepower as it looks to take the edge over Apple next year. TechCrunch also published the video below of a text race between the iPhone and a Samsung Omnia II using Swype. The Omnia II easily wins, but it could be argued that a practised iPhone user could keep up fairly well.

It looks like Swype will be a welcomed form of text input, and could be a wise investment on the part of Nokia and Samsung. The Omnia II gives you the option to revert back to a normal touch input if you do not like the Swype keyboard, so your options are not limited. If Swype is successful on smaller handsets it is likely to be very popular indeed. We eagerly await 2010 devices to see how it fairs out.

If you’ve been using Swype on the Omnia II, please post a comment to let us know how you’ve been getting on with it!