So today, to give you more choice and respond to your feedback, we’re rolling out a new update, SwiftKey 4.1. It includes three more brilliant themes and a host of bug fixes. What’s more, we’re having a half-price sale to celebrate! For a limited time only, SwiftKey and SwiftKey Tablet will be just $1.99/£1.49/€1.99 – if your friends and family have not downloaded SwiftKey yet, now is a great time to share this with them.

When you update your app, you’ll find these brilliant new themes. First, there’s Dusk, a rich, deep blue accompanied by a bright yellow Flow trail. Then Regal, a striking purple accompanied by a contrasting yellow Flow. Both of these have distinctive rounded corners to the central candidates – a modern, fresh twist on our usual key design.

Then last but not least, there’s Pitch. Black, with minimalist white edging, we believe Pitch will have extra appeal for AMOLED phone users. With fewer pixels turned on, these users may find this helps preserve battery power for longer. We know this matters to you – in our 2012 survey, 96% of respondents said battery life was either essential or quite important. Pitch comes with a bright pink Flow trail for contrast.

Here’s a list of the bug fixes also included in SwiftKey 4.1:

• Fixed some issues with Facebook personalization
• Fixed problem reaching ? on punctuation slider
• Fixed crash when rotating screen in Settings
• Improved functionality with Opera
• Improved backspace in password fields and with smileys
• Fixed crash when pressing empty predictions
• Fixed issue with .com key in Chrome URL bar

We learn what needs work from your invaluable feedback so thank you to all our users who contribute their ideas and suggestions on our feedback forums. Users reporting bugs on our bugs forum help us to identify the issues that are affecting the most people, and to track them down quickly and efficiently.

Here at SwiftKey we hope you like this latest update, but we know there are more colors, more features, more languages, more innovations that you’re eager to get your hands on – there are some fantastic developments coming up, watch this space!

Enjoy,

Ruth

The post Three new themes – and a sale to celebrate! appeared first on SwiftKey.

We were recently named one of the most innovative mobile companies in the world and our last major release, SwiftKey 4, made typing even faster, easier and more personalized. It made us consider – can we push the innovation further and take typing in a whole new direction? In fact, can we take it in every conceivable direction and add a touch of pizazz at the same time?

SwiftKey Tilt is a revolutionary new input method which transforms the everyday activity of typing into a whole-body, immersive experience. It makes it possible to text loved ones, email colleagues and type soliloquies without even touching the screen; just rock, wiggle or shimmy your smartphone to insert words in a truly innovative way. Drawing on SwiftKey’s mind-reading word prediction ability, we believe SwiftKey Tilt is the most significant typing innovation since the quill.

See it – and us – in action in our new video:

SwiftKey Tilt works by unleashing a pinball into the keyboard to power a third, exciting way to type on your device. While tapping or flowing words, the device accelerometer sends the brightly colored ball across the keyboard and when it collides with a prediction, the word is inserted. This frees up thumbs to make even quicker progress through a text, email or Tweet. It also offers users an eye-catching way to interact with their devices and is fully compatible with both the Macarena and the Harlem Shake.

“We always felt that fundamentally typing is about how you express yourself,” said Dr Ben Medlock, SwiftKey co-founder and CTO.

“We realized that we’ve never really focused on making that possible through physical movement, though. With SwiftKey Tilt we’ve changed all that.  By moving your whole body to control the little pink ball, users can now be more expressive when they type. Whether that’s body poppin’, Gangnam Style or my personal Tilting move of choice of ‘the mash potato’, it leads to a more expressive and personalized result.”

The innovative new typing method is available today for all SwiftKey users inquisitive enough to find it.

Last but not least, this project was created during one of SwiftKey’s monthly staff Innovation Days and did not use any valuable core engineering time.

How do you Tilt? Post your videos and photos on Twitter using the hashtag #swiftkeytilt.

Happy April,

Team SwiftKey

PS Like this? ‘Like’ us on Facebook!

The post SwiftKey Tilt – the whole-body typing experience appeared first on SwiftKey.

Co-founder and CTO Ben Medlock was at the big unveiling in New York and said: “Following our great success with the SwiftKey 4 launch last month, we are excited to confirm that Samsung has chosen SwiftKey’s innovative keyboard technology to be at the heart of its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. This is fantastic progress for our vision of bringing the best touchscreen typing experience to as many people as possible.”

The start of 2013 has been fast-paced and exciting – we rolled out SwiftKey 4 to all our app users, introducing our gesture input method SwiftKey Flow as well as new features and support for 60 languages in context. We unveiled an iOS toolkit for SwiftKey Healthcare and our work in this area earned the company “highly commended” for best health product or service at the prestigious GMA Awards. We took members of our team to CES in Las Vegas, MWC in Barcelona, SXSWi in Austin and the HIMSS health tech conference in New Orleans to spread the word on what we’re doing and meet the industry and some of our users.

Now, we add the Galaxy S4 launch to this list as well as exciting work with a host of other SDK partners.

Be in no doubt, there’s just as much innovation and momentum on the consumer side too. The SwiftKey app will continue to evolve as we seek to make interacting with your phones and tablets even easier and more personalized. We’ll push on with developing fun new features and customizations for the millions of you who reach us through app stores such as Google Play. Last, but never least, we’ll carry on building and engaging with our community of users, including our 100,000 VIPs, who give us their time, energy and invaluable feedback.

It’s an exciting chapter in the SwiftKey story right now – thank you for being part of it with us.

The post Yes, SwiftKey software is on the Samsung Galaxy S4 appeared first on SwiftKey.

It’ll come as little surprise that we don’t recommend downloading a pirate copy of SwiftKey. We don’t get paid, and that obviously harms our business. But piracy is also likely to harm you, as pirate Android apps tend to be full of malware and Trojans. This is particularly relevant after last week an Android blog posted step-by-step instructions on how simple it can be to turn a pirated SwiftKey APK into a malicious keylogger.

The first thing to say, loud and clear, is that this problem is completely avoided by purchasing our app through the official channels – Google Play, Amazon Appstore and Android PIT, or for beta versions, our VIP community. Official downloads of SwiftKey are completely safe, cannot be tampered with, and do not and never will log the keystrokes you type. This is set out in our very robust privacy policy that explains your legal rights as customers of ours, exactly what we do and do not do with your data, how it is kept safe and how we never collect passwords or credit card numbers (despite an alarmist warning from Google when you enable any third party keyboard app from within Android).

It’s one of the key objectives we have at SwiftKey — protecting the privacy of our users. Since we launched SwiftKey in 2010, we’ve worked hard to earn your trust. It has helped that Google chose us as a Top Developer, Editor’s Choice and featured our app over the last two years, as they only do this based on our reputation, rating and commitment to providing great apps for our users. We since became the best-selling paid app on Google Play in 2012, and as I write we’re still the world’s number one. This wouldn’t have been possible without a real commitment to the security and privacy of our users.

All of this trust and protection is lost, however, if you choose to pirate SwiftKey. It’s easy to search for “swiftkey free apk” and get a pirate copy — and because some people assume all software should be free (not just open source software), they’d rather take this route than go official, even though our app costs about the same as a fancy coffee.

I cannot emphasize enough how risky and damaging downloading pirated versions of SwiftKey can be. Sure, you might be able to buy a venti Caramel Macchiato that day with the four bucks you save, but you are also likely to find that you’ve just downloaded an intrusive trojan horse to your phone than can log everything you type and potentially clone your identity. That can be far more costly.

We are grateful to Android App Development Ireland for bringing to people’s attention how risky it is to make this mistake, but we are also now concerned that their tutorial empowers even more opportunist hackers to build keystroke loggers out of pirated Android software. As such, we felt it only right that we comment officially in order to warn people against this threat. Malware, viruses and trojans have been around since the beginning of software, but Android apps are particularly susceptible to this. Unlike iOS apps, they are relatively easy to insert malicious code into, as they are written in Java, which is easier to decompile. Add to this the ease with which someone can sideload an app onto an Android device by simply downloading an APK package file, and the problem is significant.

By buying SwiftKey from a reputable store, you won’t just get peace of mind. You’ll be joining millions of other Android users who’ve gone the official route and made SwiftKey the success it is today. You’ll be getting direct access to all updates as we produce them, straight from the source. And of course you’ll be supporting our business, meaning we grow faster and provide you with all the awesome future innovation we have planned, at a quicker pace.

Thanks for reading,

Joe Braidwood
CMO, SwiftKey

Image credit: Android Headlines

The post The dangers of pirating SwiftKey appeared first on SwiftKey.

When we first unveiled SwiftKey Flow in October, we were stunned by the reaction – it showed us there was a gap in the market for a gesture typing keyboard that really understands what you want to say. With the latest and greatest SwiftKey you can switch seamlessly between tapping, flowing and choosing words.

What’s more, Flow Through Space is a brand new feature that lets you glide down to the space bar between words, writing entire phrases as you go.

To celebrate the launch of SwiftKey 4, we are giving away a Google Nexus 7 tablet and an exclusive SwiftKey t-shirt. To be in with a chance to win, make sure you’re following @SwiftKey and just tweet ”I’m tweeting with SwiftKey 4 to win a Nexus 7! Try Android’s smartest keyboard now – http://bit.ly/swiftkey4 #swiftkey”. We’ll pick the lucky winner next Wednesday (27th February) so be sure to check your Direct Messages then! Read our full terms and conditions here.

Also to celebrate, SwiftKey 4 and SwiftKey Tablet 4 are both currently half price, so get them now. For our loyal users who previously bought SwiftKey, the new version will be rolled out as a free update.

SwiftKey 4 also boasts many improvements to the powerful prediction engine that powers all of the keyboard’s language insights. We’ve scrapped “rapid” and “precise” mode in favor of an intelligent system that learns the sort of corrections and predictions you want from the keyboard over time.

The learning capacity for SwiftKey’s personalized insights has been increased. We’ve made tweaks to Smart Space and the way SwiftKey heatmaps how you interact with the touchscreen to make both work more powerfully.

We’re also launching new language support, bringing our total up to 60 languages. No other keyboard supports this many languages at a contextual level, and we’re very proud of this milestone. The new languages are Albanian, Bosnian, Javanese, Sundanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.

There are a lot of thanks we need to give to the incredible amount of hard work that’s gone into building this version of SwiftKey. Our developers each deserve a pat on the back for the outstanding job they’ve done, but also fundamental to making SwiftKey what it is today is our army of SwiftKey VIPs — 100,000-strong — for their efforts in helping refine and shape this version. Thanks to each and every one of you. And if you’ve yet to join us, why not sign up to our VIP Community and help us build the next big thing!

Cheers,
Joe

The post Say hello to SwiftKey 4 appeared first on SwiftKey.

As the launch of the next major release of SwiftKey draws closer, we have an updated Beta for you to try out. This update fixes some force close issues, and also resolves a number of bugs reported by our awesome VIPs. We’re very grateful to you all for helping us to get the Beta into such great shape – it really wouldn’t be the same without you.

SwiftKey Flow phone beta 4.0.0.99 – 5.8 MB
SwiftKey Flow tablet beta 4.0.0.99 – 6.6 MB

Please download the APKs onto your phone or tablet, try them out, and let us know what you think in the SwiftKey VIP Community. Your feedback is vital to helping us make every new version of SwiftKey so much better than the last.

Thanks,
Charlie Edmunds
Head of Consumer Insight

—

Changes in this version:

* Fixed crash on changing keyboards
* Fixed force close on clicking update language
* Fixed other crashes
* Resolved majority of non-English punctuation problems
* New look installer to match SwiftKey Flow colors and include an introduction to SwiftKey Flow
* Added Turkish layout
* Chrome Beta should now behave like Chrome
* Snap and tap (correction of words) now compatible with Vietnamese
* Memory usage of settings app reduced
* Improved handling of non-zero length selection in Chrome and Samsung mail client
* Fixed jumping cursor in ExDialler and Samsung calculator
* Microphone key disabled in fields that don’t support voice input
* Fix for keyboard disappearing when phone build installed on tablet sized devices
* Disabled predictions in Kingsoft Office and UC browser to make SK usable in them
* Double space for period turned off by default to prevent accidental period insertion when flowing
* Replaced ‘learnt’ with ‘learned’ in personalization page (US English)
* Turned off slide down from candidate bar to close keyboard when flow is on (to be consistent with the description in the Settings menu)

Known Issues:

* Crashes when looking at the heatmap if you visit immediately after using the alternative symbols layout
* Comma key on Arabic keyboard inserts western comma
* Predictions sometimes blank when switching between languages
* Flowing words sometimes results in surprising capitalizations
* “No SD card” ribbon looks bad on low end devices

The post SwiftKey Flow Beta Updated appeared first on SwiftKey.

We’re getting closer to launching SwiftKey Flow as part of our next major SwiftKey update, but before we do, we have another beta for all of you Android users to try out!

We’ve listened to your feedback and added your top-requested features: you can now “flow” in pretty much every text field, and you can easily change or correct previously inputted words by tapping on them.

SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.76 for smartphones (APK, 6.9 MB)
SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.76 for tablets (APK, 6.9 MB)

Please download the APKs onto your phone or tablet, try them out, and let us know what you think in the SwiftKey VIP Community. We rely on your feedback to ensure that our apps are in the best possible shape before they hit the market.

Thanks!
Charlie Edmunds
Head of Consumer Insight

PS We’d love it if you could nominate our CEO Jon Reynolds for Young European Tech Entrepreneur of the Year at the Europioneers. Jon has built SwiftKey from an idea to a successful and innovative business – and he’s only just turned 27!

Changes in this version:
* Predictions (and Flow) now on in most places (exceptions: email fields, passwords, anywhere where the app doesn’t behave itself with SwiftKey, fields offering their own corrections on Android versions <= 2.2)
* Easier corrections – just tap on the word and SwiftKey will offer you 3 possibilities
* New languages: Thai, Vietnamese, Bosnian, Albanian, Javan, Sundanese (plus those added in 3.1)
* Features from SwiftKey 3.1: Berry theme, split layout in landscape on phones, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Hindi, Hinglish, Irish, Macedonian, Spanish (Latin America) and Tagalog
* New layouts for Hindi and Russian
* Ukrainian landscape layout fixed
* Backspacing on to the final word of a multi word prediction (Flow through space)  will now give better alternatives
* Typing style now inferred rather than a setting
* Long press delete accelerates after the first word

Bugs fixed:
* Flowing off shift no longer triggers a change in shift state
* Flow no longer gets stuck when you flow off the bottom of a page
* Quick period working after single letter words
* Arrow key repeats
* Learning when sending messages or tabbing between fields with the enter key fixed
* Azeri capital i behaviour corrected
* Estonian will now predict words containing ö
* Fixed force close on Beta predictions
* Flow trace no longer left behind after flowing
* Mounting an SD card will turn predictions off only if SwiftKey language packs are stored on that SD card
* Keyclick sounds no longer doubled
* Haptic duration made consistent with flow on and off

Known issues:
* Places you still cannot Flow: email fields, passwords, anywhere where the app doesn’t behave itself with SwiftKey, fields offering their own corrections on Android versions <= 2.2
* Selecting and deleting a chunk of text in Samsung email client on SIII and Note 2 deletes text before the cursor as well as after
* Slight jitteriness when toggling between Hindi and Thai primary and secondary layouts
* Turkish i still does not capitalise correctly
* Long pressing SwiftKey mic in Google Now causes the keyboard to disappear
* Occasional surprising capitalisations of flowed words
* Flowing through space often fails after relatively unusual words
* If you experience high memory usage after installing, this may be fixed by rebooting your phone

The post SwiftKey Flow Beta Update appeared first on SwiftKey.

Hi there SwiftKey fans,

Many thanks for all of your feedback regarding SwiftKey Flow beta, it has been really helpful to hear what you love, what you’re not so sure of, and of course your bug reports.

While we’ve been gathering up your feedback our developers have not been resting - they’ve been working hard on a number of performance enhancements to make SwiftKey Flow work faster and more smoothly on your devices.

• Download SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.61  for smartphones
• Download SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.61 for tablets

Please download these APKs and leave us your feedback on our VIP Community – your comments can help shape the future of SwiftKey.

Watch this space for more updates and new features based on feedback from our awesome VIPs.

Cheers, Charlie

SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.61 changelog

• Flow-through-space autocommit: if you flow-through space but mess up your last word, all the prior words will be inserted (instead of losing all the words)
• Flow in landscape on tablets (not on split layout with numpad)
• Battery usage improved (when flowing and when not in use)
• Performance of flowing and tapping improved
• Longpress of bottom-right (smiley/enter) button now works
• Fixed some force close issues
• Fixed some memory leaks
• Predictions not lost when changing keyboard layout (e.g to symbols)
• Fixed DOuble CApitalization issue

Things to be aware of:

• Flowing currently only works in fields where you see the prediction bar: in fields that have their own prediction or completion there is no prediction bar and therefore no Flow (e.g. URL bars, search bars, the “to” field of an email)
• Flow-through-space only works in languages where smart space works – in some languages this is turned off because words are often made by combining other words together,and so smart space would divide up words that you want to keep as one. Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Persian (Farsi), Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukranian, Urdu may not work with Flow-through-space
• SwiftKey Flow Beta does not currently contain any features that were new in SwiftKey 3.1 (Berry theme, new languages, split layout in landscape for normal-sized devices)
• Slide-left-to-delete a whole word does not work when Flowing is enabled – instead try holding down the backspace key to delete word-by-word

Known issues:

• Flow trail is sometimes left on the screen at the end of a word
• Personalization service continues running when it has finished
• Memory usage is still higher than we would like
• Flow trail is very faint on some CyanogenMod ROMs
• Force closes on Motorola Atrix and LG G2X with custom ROMs >= 4.0
• If a language pack is downloaded while typing the keyboard is not refreshed
• Predictions are too large on LDPI devices
• Predictions occasionally lost when alternately backspacing/spacing at the end of a word
• Ukrainian spit layout is broken
• Estonian words containing ö are not predicted
• Arrow keys do not repeat on longpress

The post New SwiftKey Flow Beta appeared first on SwiftKey.

We have a special treat for you – a half price sale and new update with a brand new theme, some new languages, and some helpful bugfixes.

Over the Christmas week SwiftKey is half price – just $1.99, £1.49, or €1.99  for SwiftKey 3 and SwiftKey 3 Tablet.

If you’ve already purchased SwiftKey just log into the relevant app store using the same details you used when you bought it and the updated version should be there ready for you to download.

Our festive Berry theme will brighten up your phone on these cold winter days. If you’re not sure how to change your theme check out our how-to video here.

SwiftKey users around the world get to join in the celebration too, as this update includes support for Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Hindi, Hinglish, Irish Gaeilge, Macedonian, Spanish (Latin America) and Tagalog. You can see our full list of supported languages here.

This update also includes a number of bugfixes – you can see the full change list on our Support site.

Enjoy!
Charlie

PS SwiftKey Flow is still currently in Beta – we are working on implementing a number of improvements and fixes based on the feedback we’ve received from our awesome SwiftKey VIPs. You can join in the conversation on our VIP Community.

The post Happy holidays from SwiftKey – 50% off appeared first on SwiftKey.

UPDATE 4TH JAN 2013 - A new version of SwiftKey Flow Beta is now available – see our blog for details

Today we’re making SwiftKey Flow beta available and we’re very excited about it. SwiftKey Flow is so much more than another gesture input keyboard. It redefines touchscreen typing with a series of incredible innovations.

Most notably, SwiftKey Flow lets you write an entire sentence without letting go of the screen. All you need to do is pass your finger over the space bar between each word that you trace out. Let SwiftKey Flow do the rest, and you’ll see the words you want magically appear on the screen. We call this ‘Flow Through Space’.

So as many of you can try the SwiftKey Flow beta as possible, we’ve made it so that all you need to is download the following APK(s) and install them on your devices. But please do remember to come back to our VIP community and give us feedback; we rely on this to refine the beta and make Flow as awesome as possible.

SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.54 for smartphones
SwiftKey Flow Beta 4.0.0.54 for tablets

SwiftKey Flow is very versatile, predicting the word you may want from the moment you begin to glide your finger on the screen. Just let go when the word you want appears. The keyboard also seamlessly integrates with SwiftKey’s classic tap engine, adapting the touch-sensitive areas of the keyboard to your tapping style to boost accuracy. And of course, the keyboard incorporates SwiftKey’s famous next word predictions.

Your feedback is vital to this beta being a success. Evan Tapper, SwiftKey’s Community Manager, sums it up best: “Our community is a vital part of this process. We rely on their feedback to ensure the product is in the best possible shape before it hits the market. But it’s about more than that – it’s about engaging with our users and building products that people really love to use.”

So please, join us and be a part of making SwiftKey even better. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!

And finally, if you’re looking for a way to say thanks – remember that today is the last day to nominate SwiftKey in the TechCrunch 2012 Crunchies.

Cheers,
Joe Braidwood

The post SwiftKey Flow Beta Now Open appeared first on SwiftKey.