19 February 2011

Swype For Nokia S60 5th Edition
Now Officially Available From Ovi Store

Swype, a patented interface that enables users to create words with one continuous finger motion across an on-screen keyboard is now officially released for S60 5th Edition and it's sitting happily in the Ovi Store.

Procedure of downloading and enabling the Swype input is quite simple and basically all you have to do is to access Store from your phone, open Swype page, and than simply click on download button.

After downloading and installation you'll need to reboot your device to get the swype as default input method and test it out. Once you get past the swype learning curve, it is pretty fast and awesome experience and the only thing I don't like is need to reboot phone every time you want to change the input method from Swype to classic tap and vice versa.

If you wish to use Swype on an S60 5th Edition phone, the latest version is available in the Ovi Store where it sits right next to the already-existing version for Symbian^3. Both of these versions include the same core four Americas languages as before: English, Spanish, Canadian French, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The additional language dictionaries aren't released to the Ovi Store yet. They still remain here for you to download and use. They will be updated further as they approach release status, and more languages will eventually be made available. That will continue to be an on-going process, so stay tuned to that.

There is, however, one MAJOR caveat: the new Symbian^3 beta version of Swype is NOT COMPATIBLE with any of the existing language dictionaries available as of this writing. There will be an update to all of those languages to support the new beta, and they will be coming out periodically, hopefully on a weekly basis. At the moment, there are 14 languages waiting to be signed for inclusion here, and as soon as they come through, they will be made available here. Those languages are as follows:

• Danish
• Dutch
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Icelandic
• Indonesian
• Italian
• Malay
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese (European)
• Swedish
• Turkish

For the first time here on Beta Labs, a Symbian^3 version of Swype has been made available. This version is far advanced compared to the version on Ovi Store, including all the improvements made to the S60 5th Edition that had been evolving here before. The Symbian^3 version is also fairly close to release, itself, having inherited all those fixes from the S60 5th Edition version.

I expect that to be on Monday, 21 February, 2011. Those updated languages will be compatible with both the new beta as well as the released versions of Swype. If your favourite language isn't included there, be patient: it's coming. Swype can only update so many languages at a time, so give them some time to do that.

The central message is that if you use a Symbian^3 phone, and you need to use one of those language dictionaries, then you should not update your version of Swype until that language has been updated to work with the new beta.

My final note here is to explain what's going on with me. There was a major reorganization in Nokia that began late last year, and it caught me in its sights. Due to that, I am no longer the primary Swype Integration Technical Lead. I have had other things on my plate that haven't allowed me to devote much time to monitoring these forums. I apologize for that, as I wish I could have continued to offer my support. I may be able to stop by from time to time now and then in the future and offer some minimal support, but going forward the primary support role will be done by someone else. And no, I don't know exactly whom that will be.

I hope you continue to enjoy Swype as it continues to be updated in the future. I, myself, am still a fan of Swype, and I find it very difficult to use standard tap keyboards now that I'm used to Swype.

Craig Arnush

Anyway, just in case you've been living under a rock for the past year or so, Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 40 words per minute.

The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.

Swype and Nokia have been hard at work to deliver a limited beta release to Nokia S60 5th edition device owners. Your feedback will be valuable to us in the coming weeks, and we are especially interested in how well Swype interfaces with the many types of applications you use every day.

Check out the official Swype for Symbian page for download information as well as Swypeinc.com for news, tips and instructional videos.

With the 12-key numeric keypad appearing on 95% of all handsets shipped, it is easy to take input interface technologies on the mobile phones for granted but popularity of new keyless handset signals that mobile phones as we know them may soon be a thing of the past?

As the touch-sensitive screens are becoming ever more popular in the high-end market and as the handsets feature-set continues to expand, and the number and variety of applications on phones grows, the mechanisms for interacting and controlling them are put under ever-greater strain and the user demand for ease of use has never been greater!

Interfaces, such as motion sensing, haptics, multitouch, advanced voice recognition capabilities and evolutions to predictive text functionality are set to boost data entry efficiencies and introduce a level of multimodality never before experienced on a mobile phones!

T9 technology has set the bar for mobile usability, creating mobile user experiences that help drive consumer demand for and use of mobile communications devices and services but now we need something similar for the touchscreen based phones.

Cliff Kushler, the co-inventor of the T9 predictive text input which is used on most of the today’s phones is back in game with ‘Swype’ a new alphanumeric entry technology for touch-screen devices.

Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 50 words per minute.

The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.

Swype is faster than existing text entry methods because it has built-in intelligence that does not require users to hit each letter accurately. Also, tracing a smooth, continuous path is much faster than “target-tap-lift-target-tap...”. Even novice users can quickly achieve sustained data entry speeds of over 40 words per minute.