In an email to some Windows Insider testers, obtained by The Verge, Microsoft is looking for iPhone users to trial the Word Flow keyboard. It’s not clear when Word Flow will be released publicly on iOS, but Microsoft is already ready to test it more broadly so it will likely arrive in the coming months. Microsoft’s Windows Phone version of Word Flow includes autocorrect, suggestions, gestures, and the ability to swipe letters (like Swype) to type out words.
I’m actually excited about this. I can’t stand the iOS keyboard, but I consider the Windows Phone keyboard to be the best one around.
I only have an iPad 2, which works well enough for what we do with it. I kept it on iOS 6 though for storage and performance reasons. This might just be enough reason to upgrade.
I am wondering about 2 things though:
1: Normally the keyboard supports multiple languages, but those come as OS-packages on WP/WM. Without multiple languages it would be useless.
2: The prediction has gotten worse for me on WM10 compared to WP81. It will be interesting to see how good the prediction will be.
I guess I will ask a coworker to test it first before deciding if Microsoft actually gave me a reason to upgrade iOS
I own Android, iOS and Windows Phone phones. Windows Phone is my least favourite. I like the iOS one, except for the international keyboard changer. The Google Keyboard has emoji support built in and I like that a lot more. I have a Polish, Swedish and English keyboard as well as the emoji on iOS, and it’s a PITA to switch between them.
What do you like about the iOS one? It doesn’t even include swyping and the autocomplete and prediction is far worse than others.
The one from WP also includes emoji support, just swype “funny” and you get a nice grinning emoji in there. Or thumbtap “pizza ” if that is more your style.
I do like the WM10 keyboard better because of the language switching and several other “power features” like having both a comma and a dot. It is just the prediction that is “good” when it used to be awesome.
I don’t find WP any better than iOS, but both are better than Android. The problem with iOS is that the suggestions come through two different mechanisms. In Polish it still uses the older mechanism, whereas in English it uses the new picker above the keyboard. The older system is confusing if you have used android or WP because you need to hit the word if you *don’t* want the correction, where as it’s the other way round in those OS IIRC.
The on-screen keyboard on BB10 devices, anyone? That thing is so good that when I had to switch to iOS (the lack of native apps on BlackBerry 10 made me do this) I decided after a couple of days that my Z10 deserves a data only SIM, so I can get all my e-mailing done with that and only use the iPhone for Apple Music, Spotify and well, that’s all.
The BB10 keyboard is a dream.
I only have 1 coworker that has a PassPort and surprisingly he is one of the slowest and worst “typers”. I tried it and wasn’t very impressed by the keyboard (the OS and device were interesting). This could be because of my experience with the WP8.1 keyboard though. The update from 8 to 8.1 turned my phone from “read-only” into “responder”.
I would be very interested to hear from people that have a lot of experience with multiple keyboards, but the one coworker that has “used them all for a year or two” hasn’t actually tried BB-OS. He prefers the WP keyboard as well, but also noticed the WM keyboard got worse a bit
I haven’t used physical keyboards (which the Passport has). I was talking about the on-screen keyboard on all-touch BB10 devices. It is, in my opinion, the best ever made.
https://youtu.be/s6iNAeXson8
That keyboard seems to have a couple of nice features that I would like to have:
* Swiping left to erase a word
* Up to 3 active languages at the same time
* Predictions close to where you are typing
I would miss swyping a lot, but that keyboard seems to make good use of swypes for other functionality
You can get the BB10 keyboard on Android if you happen to have a device with 5.1 running on it; still waiting for HTC to push an OS update for my One m9, of course.
What is it called?
I have been told BlackBerry actually bought the software keyboard, and have been looking for the independent Android version ever since.
Apparently “BlackBerry Keyboard”, but I couldn’t find it in Google Play, because Google claims it is incompatible with my 5.1.1 device. So I needed to sideload it (what is up with that?)
It works fine except it doesn’t handle multiple languages like it did on my Z10 and SwiftKey currently can on Android, so you have to manually switch keyboard for each language
At least it is powerfull enough to let me disable that #Q”¤%”!¤##%!! auto-“correction” of i to I without having to disable autocapitalize after period like I need to on SwiftKey. That shit made me delete SwiftKey and not look back.
“BlackBerry Keyboard” 😉
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blackberry.keyboar…
It’s my favorite as well, and one of the reasons why I’m still sticking with WP for now. The stock Android keyboard is OK, but the iOS one drives me up the wall anytime I have to use it. Just a matter of getting used to it, i guess.