I've been using SwiftKey X (currently version 2.0.5.something), since it came out free on Amazon's app store. It does hidden Markov model type training to sort out what words come after what other words, and the nifty new feature is training from your Facebook, Gmail, etc., giving it a much larger corpus.

And it works. It truly does.

Except, for some reason, with proper names. If I type "David", it then offers me "Beckham", who, I promise you, is not somebody I regularly type about. Similarly irrelevant words are often offered to me that probably make sense globally, but have nothing to do with my own usage.

Anybody sorted out a way to fix this sort of thing? Or, anybody else sorted out a different Android keyboard that's similarly clever at the hidden Markov chain trick? One other one that I briefly tried was A.I. Type, but their ethical code gives me pause. They're doing a lot of work on a central server, which seems like all kinds of bad from a security perspective, versus SwiftKey who does all the work locally on your phone (although they use their own server to snarf your Gmail writings, if you enable that).

I'm using SwiftKey X like you- since is was free on Amazon one day.
It's pretty nifty and I appreciate the help it gives, but I haven't tried to tweak it at all.
I keep it locked out of my "personal" info as much as I can see how to.

I believe you should be able to long-press the suggested word and it'll give you the option to delete it.

I run into this all the time as well. It knows that if a new line starts with "M," I'm probably trying to start typing "Matt" for my signature. So I choose "Matt" from the suggestions and it then suggests "Damon"

But it hasn't done that since I removed "Damon" from the suggestions.

I've been using Swiftkey since it was in beta on the phone and the same thing on the tablet. It's easily my favorite replacement keyboard.

Ha! Perfect.

Oh, wow! Good to know!

Quick comments about A.I.type:

1. Our keyboard doesn't send sensitive data (passwords, credit card numbers etc.) to the servers!

2. You are completely anonymous to our servers, that process tens of millions of transactions a day, and do not store the information that goes through them.

3. You can turn off Cloud-based prediction and keep getting good prediction based only on our local repository and MyType - our auto-learning module on the device itself.

I hope that clarifies things.

Noam Rotem
A.I.type

You joined just to post this about your software? How did you know this thread was here so quickly?

I bet on google.

I guess he's sensitive to criticism of the fact that he's shipping your keystrokes over the network to his servers. Even if they're encrypted, it's a huge and inappropriate information leak.

Yes. Google does index very quickly, but then I thought what search terms were being used etc. Is someone sitting there religiously looking for threads/forums discussing this AI?

For the record I tried SwiftKey based on a (facebook) recommendation from a good friend of mine. I paid for it too - we don't get the free Amazon app per day in Australia. I never quite adjusted to it. I perhaps found the keys too small or something. Put it this way: I paid for and installed it but when I reset the whole phone I didn't bother reinstalling and really didn't even want to. After some months I'm still using the Android keyboard...

The keyboard has become an extremely subjective thing. Some people swear by Swype and would never use anything else. I personally never adjusted to it and stopped using it because I didn't find it to be very accurate. I also felt like it only saved a tiny bit of time, and that time was then wasted when it would select the wrong long word and I'd have to erase it and start over.

I like Swiftkey because I've been able to fairly quickly adjust to how it predicts text. I've become very good at knowing when it will predict the right word and when I shouldn't bother to look up at the suggestions. For common phrases it just flies along, and for less common words I just keep on typing. I use it as an assistant and not as a crutch, and I like that I have that option. I tried using Swype as just a keyboard and something just felt wrong about it.

Anyway, like I said it's very subjective, so if you like the stock Android keyboard then that's great!

I have to admit that on-screen typing hasn't quite reached the quality of the iPhone, but it's getting there as these companies make better quality capacitive screens. Larger screens should help a lot too, and I can't wait for my own phone to have a nice big screen

Does not google allow setting up alerts based on search terms?

I've used the original iPhone 3G keyboard and on my Droid X I've primarily used Swype and Swiftkey. I played with the Google keyboard but I prefer Swiftkey for its ability to sometimes guess the next word, although I do agree the keys are bit on the small side, and that's with the oversized screen on my Droid X.

Swype is an odd bird. When it works, it's genius. For three-character words, it was often quite wrong, and its dictionary was loaded with quite a bit of junk that you couldn't remove that would also tend to match on short words. On long words, if you screwed up half way, you'd have to start all over again, which really sucked. Also, if you just washed your hands, then your fingers wouldn't slide smoothly on the screen.

I was just thinking how great I was at Graffiti on my old Handspring PDA and it occurred to me to search the market (yes, I'm not that quick).

Reviews are mixed (aren't they always?).
I'm going to try it out.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.access_company.graffiti&feature=search_result

You should have thought of it a couple days ago when it was the free app of the day on Amazon

*facepalm*
Did I mention I'm not that quick?

I have taken to using touchpal on my htc - it is good enough I can type entire sentences without looking at the screen (touch screens have always been my least favourite part of modern smartphones, as anyone who has heard me rant will know:-)

It's a free one - give it a shot and see what you think.

The only thing I haven't liked about Swiftkey is when I miss type and get a number in the word most of the time it will not give a good suggestion.

My main gripe with Swiftkey is that it doesn't seem to understand that users will sometimes accidentally hit the spacebar when they wanted something on the bottom row, and it'd be nice if they found a way to correct for this. I know that's a bit harder than the normal cases because the space is the word boundary, but it happens to me often enough to significantly slow things down.

One of the features that catches me off guard is where it replaces your word with the favored 'offering' when you hit space.
"No, dammit. I meant what I typed!"

Basically I have to always hit the green bar offered word in order to move on.

I'm pretty sure the space thing is configurable in SwiftKey's advanced settings.

Ah- indeed! Thanks.

Yup, this also happens with the shift key and even the auto-completion keys on top. If you're aiming for a regular key and you instead hit an "important" key, the important key often wins, even when the keyboard app ostensibly has enough context to see that you were barreling on and maybe you really wanted a 'z', not a shift.

I run into this from time to time, but for some reason I don't find it to be as big an issue for me. Maybe I've adjusted around it...

Either way, I wonder if this is as big an issue with larger screens. I'll certainly try it out when I get my new Nexus Prime sometime this month

Google bought BlindType a year ago. Maybe their technology is integrated in the stock Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard. One way or another, we'll find out next week. Samsung is already teasing the new phone and the announcement proper will be on October 11.

I'd forgotten they bought that! That was most crazy looking keyboard out there, and I'm curious to see how well it works in reality. It seemed like it couldn't be as good as it was demonstrated to be...

Yikes!

I'm just not sure how Swype is worth $100 million...

The space bar is no longer required, for one -- Smart Space detects and corrects "miss-typed or omitted spaces across whole phrases."

Nice.

Ugh. On the other hand:

"Punctuation has been moved around, too, with the comma, period, question mark and exclamation point all sharing a key."