We’ve already sung the praises of the Android keyboard alternative, Swiftkey, which is able to predict what you’re typing on your phone, as it learns your language and typing styles. The latest app to hit the Android Market aiming to compete with Swiftkey is the free AI Type.
Like most predictive keyboards, AI Type can tell what you really meant to say when you mis-type a word, and auto-corrects it for you. The app then takes it one step further by predicting what you’re going to say before you say it. The predictions come from AI Type’s servers, but if you’re offline, the app can manage, to a certain extent, on its own.
AI Type is context sensitive, and so it should, for the most part, be able to figure out what it is you want to say. There are some improvements in the works, including the ability to adapt to your own writing style, a feature which at the moment, puts Swiftkey ahead of AI Type as far as accuracy is concerned. Other developments around the corner include a tablet version of the app, as well as offering the service in other languages.
Besides being awesomely predictive, AI Type comes with some customization features, including various keyboard themes. You can instantly transform your Android keyboard into an iPhone-like keyboard, have it looking a little bit more like a Windows 7 phone, or if you’d rather stick to the Android look, you can opt for the Gingerbread theme. You can also customize the keyboard height, select a background image which appears behind the keyboard, and alter all of the keyboard’s colours.
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But most importantly, just how good is the keyboard at predicting what you want to say? I played around with it for a bit, and it was pretty impressive. It isn’t without it’s quirks. Punctuation is apparently inconsequential to AI Type, but then again, for most people, punctuation isn’t of the utmost importance when sending a text message, for example. Because AI Type depends on algorithms, it doesn’t catch every single mistake you make, but the app definitely can help improve your typing speed on your phone.
If for any reason you need to switch between different keyboards on your phone, you can easily do that by pressing down the AI Type logo until a selection screen comes up with your enabled keyboards.
To see the app in action, check out the video below:
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