We told you this was coming: Swype has just made it possible for any Android handset owner to download their innovative touch-screen enabled text-input application straight from the website. Which means a whole lot of people can henceforth start challenging that Guinness World Record for speedy textin’ using Swype.
Up until today, Swype came pre-installed on only a fraction of available Android phones (including the all new Motorola Droid X) due to its licensing business model, although the company did open up to 25,000 eager beta testers a couple of months ago – most of whom seem to have completely fallen in love with it.
Well, anyone can download it now, but only for a limited time (a couple of days) and with a somewhat limited feature set. Important: it won’t work if you have a phone that came pre-installed with Swype and support will be via Swype’s forums only.
What Swype does is provide a faster, easier way to input text on any screen using your finger or a stylus, which makes it particularly useful for tablet computers and smartphones. It has a built-in database of words, so you don’t even need to be super accurate when swyping.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnQts9NUnL4&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00]
Swype already supported English and has now also added support for Italian and Spanish, which we’re told were the most often requested additional languages.
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The Swype app should run seamlessly on all Android versions. Note that it isn’t available for download from Android Market – you need to actually visit the Swype website and make sure your phone’s settings allow you to install and run apps from ‘unknown sources’.
For your background: Swype was developed by founders Cliff Kushler (co-inventor of T9) and Randy Marsden (the developer of the onscreen keyboard included in Windows), along with a team of programmers and linguists. The company has to date raised $7.9 million from investors like DoCoMo Capital, Samsung Ventures and Nokia Growth Partners.
Here’s a recent interview Michael Arrington did with Swype CEO Mike McSherry:
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/88719749001?isVid=1&isUI=1
