Google Keyboard is the default Android 4.0 and above keyboard, available
as an app.
(Credit: Google)
It may not be a Swype or a SwiftKey killer yet, but the Google Keyboard is
now available as a downloadable app.
A post Wednesday on Google+ touted the Google
Play Store debut of the app, which offers "Gesture Typing" so
that you can drag your finger from one letter to the next to spell words.
Google Keyboard
offers some interesting competition for other swipe-to-write keyboards. Most
notably, it's free where most of its competitors are not. It also has next-word
suggestions, auto-complete, voice recognition, and support for 26 languages,
although the keyboard itself is English-only for now.
On the other hand,
it's only available on Android 4.0 and above. While adoption of Ice Cream Sandwich
and Jelly Bean continues to improve, currently at around 60 percent of Android
devices, over a third of active Android
phones still run Gingerbread.
However, Google
downplayed the competitive angle in its anonymously-written blog post, noting
that SwiftKey and TouchPal are "some of our other favorites". If
anything, by making the keyboard available as an app Google is competing not
with other keyboard makers but with companies like Samsung and HTC that alter
the stock Android experience. (source: cnet)
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