SwiftKey 3, a new version of the Android keyboard, brings a new look and is designed to ward off spacebar errors more intelligently.

One area where I think the iPhone has held its own against Android phones I've used is the responsiveness of the touch-screen keyboard, but one area where I think Android has shown more innovation better predictive typing. Which is why I was happy to see the release of SwiftKey 3 today.

The software one-ups the predictive typing abilities of Android's built-in keyboard, learning from your own typing to offer not just the next letters in a word, but also the next word, too. Hitting the spacebar completes the action. (When you start typing, the first word it suggests is "I," and if you keep hitting the spacebar, SwiftKey types, "I am a beautiful person.")

In a big step up from the earlier version, the spacebar is now bigger. I've been using SwiftKey for months, and the software for me has done a good job enabling a touch-typing style where I don't look at the keyboard for the most part. But I'd often get bad results with the earlier SwiftKey when I hit letters or punctuation by mistake instead of the spacebar.

Other changes in the new version include "smart space," which is designed to detect spurious or missing spaces; a flexible punctuation key th... [Read more]