So I've owned SwiftKey for a while, and always used it shamelessly, as Stock keyboard on android devices were terrible.
But along came Jelly Bean with its "predictive text" keyboard and excellent voice dictation software.
So I gave it a shot, and after over a month of using it, I'm in love with voice dictation, but lukewarm on the predictive text (SwiftKey is far superior here). SwiftKey though, is not without faults. From what I recall when I last used it, their voice dictation was terrible, and I'm seeing reviews that it lags pretty badly in Chrome.
I'm pretty torn on what to use, so I've compiled a pro-con list
PRO - Stock Keyboard:
CON - Stock Keyboard:
PRO - SwiftKey 3
CON - SwiftKey 3
Thoughts on this list? What do you use and why?
As of now, I'm personally still sticking with Stock until proven SwiftKey is clearly the better option.
(I have both phone/tablet SwiftKey apps purchased, so it's not a matter of "wasting" money to buy them. It's purely a matter of which is "better")
But along came Jelly Bean with its "predictive text" keyboard and excellent voice dictation software.
So I gave it a shot, and after over a month of using it, I'm in love with voice dictation, but lukewarm on the predictive text (SwiftKey is far superior here). SwiftKey though, is not without faults. From what I recall when I last used it, their voice dictation was terrible, and I'm seeing reviews that it lags pretty badly in Chrome.
I'm pretty torn on what to use, so I've compiled a pro-con list
PRO - Stock Keyboard:
- Voice dictation is AWESOME! Super quick to use as functionality is baked right into the keyboard and OS
- Predictive text is not bad
- Google is (hopefully) gathering data on our typing, which will improve how we type, as well as can be synced across multiple Google devices
CON - Stock Keyboard:
- Predictive text not as good as SwiftKey
- No Return Key, other small functionalities missing
- No method to sync with Facebook, Google, etc to learn our typing data
- Maybe Google is NOT collecting our typing data, which means all the effort I'm putting in "to make this better" is going to waste
PRO - SwiftKey 3
- Predictive Text is second to none, also has smart spaces. It's awesome at texting.
- Return Key!! And other added functionalities
- Syncs with Facebook, Google, etc.
- REALLY does learn your typing and makes you better as you go along
CON - SwiftKey 3
- Voice dictation not as good as Stock Keyboard, slow to access, not nearly as responsive. Sometimes refuses to fill in words
- Apparently VERY laggy in Chrome
- Does not sync data across devices. Have to use SwiftKey Tablet for Nexus 7... although I don't think Stock Keyboard does this either
- Data not backed up to Cloud. You delete SwiftKey, you lose all the typing data it learned from you (such as Typing Heat Map, etc). Not sure if Google is doing this, but it's a feature they could have implemented.
Thoughts on this list? What do you use and why?
As of now, I'm personally still sticking with Stock until proven SwiftKey is clearly the better option.
(I have both phone/tablet SwiftKey apps purchased, so it's not a matter of "wasting" money to buy them. It's purely a matter of which is "better")
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