Android News
SlideIT Keyboard 3.0 hits the Market
January 12, 2011 | by Michael Heller
Android News
The SlideIT keyboard is a gesture keyboard in the same vein as Swype, but with one major difference: it’s not a beta product, in fact, it has just hit version 3.0. SlideIT has been in the Android Market for quite a while, and is a full featured keyboard including a speech input button, tons of emoticons, and graffiti input for symbols.
Version 3.0 of SlideIT brings:
- On-the-fly suggestions
- Tapping Followed by Sliding
- Long Press for Single Number or Symbol on Main Layout
- Hide keyboard form Return key
- Emotion Layout
- Special characters diacritics modes(for SMS)
- New Shortcuts modes
- New definitions for Automatic Spacing
- New definitions for Automatic Capitalization
- Increase Accuracy & Performance
The best additions here were the long press for numbers and symbols on the main layout and the hide keyboard key. They were small annoyances before, but these changes make a big difference. SlideIT does cost a little under $4, but there is a free demo version in the Market, so you can give it a spin before buying.
Keep an eye out here, because I’m in the process of writing up a comparison between all 3 of the major gesture keyboards: SlideIT, Swype and ShapeWriter, and I’ll be putting that up within the next week. Spoilers: SlideIT has an edge, simply because it can be found in the Market. But, I’ll be comparing the features and usability of all three in-depth soon.
All these keyboards lack a "hide keyboard" button.
On Swype you just hold the menu button and it hides the keyboard. No need to waste the screen space on another button.
no matter what keyboard you're using, just do a long press of the menu button to show/hide your keyboard
Apparently you didn't read the review of look at the pic, Chris. "The best additions here were the long press for numbers and symbols on the main layout and the hide keyboard key."
Make that 4. You forgot about the new T9 Flex keyboard, which is awesome.
Definitely adding that to the mix. One question: does the FlexT9 not have a custom dictionary, or am I missing something?
Ultra Keyboard also offers tracing of words similar to Slide It but also looks much nicer.