I used to have Swype on my HD2 when it was running Windows 6.5. It came with it. It’s the best smartphone keyboard I’ve used so far. If you don’t know, with Swype, instead of pressing on the letters on the keyboard for each word, you swipe on the letters that make up the word. Yeah, it sounds weird at first, but once you get used to it, you can’t live without it.

It’s especially great for one-handed typing. Even with autocorrect on the normal keyboard, Swype’s predictive technology is much better and easier to use. It’s also amazingly fast. Most of the time, it’ll correctly input a word as long as you swipe most of the letters - even in the wrong sequence! For big words, it’s awesome - just swipe through letters that are in the word, and even if it’s in the wrong sequence, the correct word would come up.

The only problem with Swype is it’s not an app you can download on the Android market. It either comes with your phone, or you’ll have to download it somewhere illegally.

When I switched from Windows 6.5 to Android, I lost Swype in the process and hated typing with the default keyboards. It feels so slow and cumbersome, especially if you have to type with one hand. During Android’s celebration of reaching their one billionth app download, when they featured popular apps for just $0.10 each, I downloaded SlideIt, an app similar to Swype.

Overall, although I’m just glad I have a similar app for typing, I do miss Swype. SlideIt is just not as good. First, you have to be very accurate with the characters you’re swiping or SlideIt would give you the wrong word or return a question mark. With Swype, you can fudge a lot, and it’ll still correctly figure out which word you’re trying to type. Especially with big words - like “entertainment” for instance - you would have to make sure that each of those characters are swiped and in the correct sequence or SlideIt would have a fit. With Swype, I just swipe the first letter, fudge everything in between, end with the last letter, and the word magically appears. I didn’t know how good I had it with Swype until it’s gone.

Swype’s handling of capitalization and adding new words to its database is also more intuitive. I don’t really have to think about it. It just works. With SlideIt, there are times when I just can’t make the first letter of a name or the first letter of a word in the beginning of a sentence lowercase. The app would just automatically capitalize them and refuse to let you lowercase them.

I also can’t figure out how to add new words to SlideIt’s dictionary. This is especially annoying if you have to manually type in a name that’s not in English. There’s either no way to do it, or if there is a way, you would have to do it manually. With Swype, it would just do it automatically. It just magically knows.

I sound like I’m complaining about SlideIt, so let’s take a step back. If you’ve never used Swype, then it’s great. It’s a lot better than using the default keyboard, even with autocorrect. I’m glad I bought it and would never return to using the default keyboard. If your Android phone didn’t come with Swype, then SlideIt’s a good alternative. But comparing the two, Swype is just way more polished and intuitive.

SlideIt Demo:

Swype Demo:

As you can see from the demos, the guy is swiping a lot faster with Swype. That’s because it’s just better at predicting the word you’re trying to type. You can fudge a lot of the letters, and it’ll still correctly come up with the right word. You can’t do that with SlideIt; if you fudge through the letters, you’ll either get the wrong word or a question mark.

UPDATE: From commenter Jacob, I learned that you can download Swype at beta.swype.com. I did and am now Swyping again!