Swype In Action (VIDEO): A New Way To Type On Touchscreens

MobileCrunch has gotten its hands on Swype, a revolutionary text-entry system that offers a whole new way of "typing" on touchscreen phones, and released a video demonstrating the new tool in action.

Swype was invented by the creator of the T9 predictive typing system and has been touted as potentially posing a challenge to the iPhone, as its input mechanism could significantly increase the speed at which users can write on touchscreen phones.

MobileCrunch explains how Swype works:

Rather than typing words by tapping letter-by-letter, you swipe (swipe, Swype - Get it?) your finger (or a stylus) through the letters of each word. If you wanted to spell "DOG", for example, you'd put your thumb down on D, slide it over to O, down to G, and then release. You don't have to be perfectly accurate - in fact, you can be pretty sloppy and Swype will still figure out what you mean. If it's not positive which word you meant, it'll present a list of possible options.

Swype is launching on the Samsung Omnia II from Verizon.

Check it out for yourself in the video below, then watch Swype go head-to-head with an iPhone in a typing speed test.

Tell us what you think!

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Swype looks...

Much faster, and easier, than anything out there

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Comments

[jasev01]

08:07 AM on 12/17/2009

or you can get a keyboard like my droid

[pokemon]

07:19 PM on 12/16/2009

I can still type faster then they do with that program. And using my thumb and index finger:)

[SmartladyDem]

01:56 PM on 12/16/2009

There has been an app for that for over a year and a half. By the way, it gets really, really tedious.

[Comidoki]

02:55 PM on 12/16/2009

more tedious then pecking out words?

[Ambient70]

12:33 PM on 12/16/2009

Wow, the guy typing on the iPhone has to be the slowest and worst I have ever seen. Of course the other looks faster and better when compared to that!

I do have some issues with typing on my iPhone sometimes, but it's not nearly as bad as some folks think. However if you have long fingernails like my friend does, it can present a problem, which is why she doesn't have an iPhone, but instead has a... HTC Diamond, I think it's called. Different strokes for different folks. Literally. :p

[RickyT]

12:32 PM on 12/16/2009

Pretty cool. I know this may seem unrelated but reading th article made me think of this http://www.letitflow.com/how-to-make-the-worlds-most-expensive-christmas-card/ if you are giving a touch screen phone as a gift this year, no matter which one it is, you should turn it into a card.

[Camel54]

10:41 AM on 12/16/2009

It seems like for casual texting, this would not work very well since everything is abbreviated and reconfigured for speed-- "u r a h8r" Swype would freak out on that and pop up boxes asking what you meant for every word.

However, for taking notes or jotting down work ideas, writing ideas, responding to professional communications through text or email when you don't want to look like a 13-year-old girl, Swype seems to have a very nice advantage. It doesn't seem revolutionary, but I'd certainly try it as long as I wasn't restricted to only using Swype and could choose to use txt speak when I wanted.

[T C Mits]

10:27 AM on 12/16/2009

There's an app for that.

[LightShadow62]

10:21 AM on 12/16/2009

I wonder how long the guy practiced the run on Swype before he got it right?

[BryanTheRegOps]

09:36 AM on 12/16/2009

I'll keep my actual physical keyboard and my BB Thank you.

[Smurfaveli]

11:41 AM on 12/16/2009

Nothing compares to a real keyboard.