This morning I stumbled upon a tweet from Josh Tucker of ModMyi indicating that Swype has been ported to iOS. I’ve confirmed it works on all iOS devices, including the iPad 2.
Needless to say, this exciting news piqued my interest immediately, and I just had to try it out for myself.
The purpose of Swype is to allow you to type without lifting your finger off the keyboard. Many claim that this makes the typing experience much better on a handheld device.
If you didn’t know, Swype is available on pretty much every other platform sans iOS, and it’s loved by its fans.
Note that you will of course need a jailbroken iPhone to try out Swype, and again it is in beta; so don’t expect it to work perfectly.
Check out my video walkthrough of the Swype beta in action…
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op4t3h10vMU[/tube]
As of now, Swype only works with stock iOS apps [Note: iDB Reader ryan notes that it works with biteSMS, so this may not be entirely true. I tested it, and indeed it does work with biteSMS], such as Messages and Mail. One other caveat to note is that there is no blue line that follows your “Swypes” as you type, so it may take a bit getting used to.
Another thing I noticed is that the stock iOS keyboard isn’t exactly the best keyboard for a Swype implementation. As you’ll see in the video, I received those keyboard pop-ups while hovering over a key for too long (the hovering is due to my ineptness with Swype. Experts likely won’t have this problem, it got better with practice.). That can interrupt the Swype process, and cause you to type something that you didn’t aim to type.
Other than those small gripes, it’s a pretty good implementation for a beta. If you’re a Swype connoisseur, you definitely are going to want to check this out for yourself.
You can add the following repo to gain access to the Swype beta: http://wynd.x10.mx.
What do you think? Also, how could I forget? Big shoutout to @WyndWarrior for porting this. He’s the same guy behind DreamBoard, so he’s an excellent member of the jailbreak community.
[ModMyi]