Reviewer`s Guide: Swype for Android

Swype
Reviewer’s Guide
The latest update to Nuance’s Swype keyboard for Android brings new Star Trek themes
that feature characters and settings from some of the show’s most iconic installments. 19
Star Trek themes are available to choose from. In addition, 20 premium themes for Swype
are also available, allowing users to personalize their typing experience more than ever.
Swype has also been upgraded with a new Emoji keyboard that lets users quickly and
easily browse hundreds of different options to find the right ones to depict their thoughts,
emotions, and reactions.
The following reviewer’s guide provides a walkthrough of the new features available for
Swype for Android. Once you have activated Swype, please refer to this document for stepby-step instructions for downloading and testing the new Star Trek and premium themes,
the Emoji keyboard, and other enhanced features, like intelligent phrase prediction.
New Features
Swype Store and Premium Downloadable Themes: Swype for Android
now features an all-new Swype Store and more premium keyboard
themes.
Users can choose from nearly 80 themes to customize the Swype
keyboard to their preference. This includes 19 Star Trek-branded
keyboards with designs that feature characters from Star Trek: The
Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation, including Captain
Kirk, Mr. Spock, Sulu and more.
Beyond the new Star Trek themes, users can purchase additional colorful
themes via the Swype Store.
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Press-hold the Swype Key to access the Swype Store
To Try Out New Themes:
• Tap on a theme you wish to preview
• Tap on “Buy” to open the purchasing prompt
• You should see a notice that says, “This is a test order, you will
not be charged”
o Make sure that you see the above message when
attempting to purchase. Please contact us if you do not.
• Depending on your personal Google Play settings, you may be
asked for your Google Play password and CVC, but no charges
will be made.
• Because this replicates the Google Store purchase process,
for each theme tested, you will receive a receipt from Google Play
that reads, “Test: Your Google Play Order Receipt.” However, no charges
will have been made.
Emoji Keyboard: Swype’s Emoji Keyboard offers Emoji in a more visual
and accessible way. Quickly browse through hundreds of Emoji and
express your emotions and reactions.
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Press-hold the return key to access the Emoji Keyboard
Intuitive Emoji: In addition to the Emoji Keyboard, Swype offers Emoji
directly via the Word Choice List. Swype or Tap certain words to input
them as Emoji.
• For example, tap or Swype the word “Happy” to see a smiley Emoji suggested
Powerful Predictions
Two Word Phrase Prediction: Swype offers phrase predictions that
allow users to more quickly and easily input commonly used phrases.
After entering a word that is part of a phrase, Swype can offer multiple
words as one selection.
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Open messaging
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Swype “What’s for dinner tonight?”
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Start a new sentence, Swype “What’s for”
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Select “dinner tonight” from the Word Choice List
Punctuation Prediction: The Swype keyboard will suggest punctuation as a Next Word
Prediction option. If a user ends a phrase with a specific punctuation, they
will see that punctuation suggested in the Word Choice List.
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Open messaging application
Enter “Hey, how’s it going?”
Delete all text
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Enter “Hey, how’s it going”
Press space
“?” displays as a Next Word Prediction option
Next Word Prediction: Swype’s personal language model with next word prediction is
more intelligent than ever. Swype also has the most extensive phrase and
sentence prediction models available, which means you can predict words
in commonly used phrases like “Best of the best,” “Dancing with the stars,”
and “Nail on the head.”
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Open messaging application
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Swype in the sentence: “Ben, how are you doing”
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Delete sentence and then start Swyping in the sentence again. Complete sentence
using words that pop up in Word Choice List
Extended Phrase Prediction:
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Open messaging application
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Swype “of the” then press space, note Word Choice options above
the keyboard
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Delete all entered text
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Input “Best”
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Complete sentence by selecting words from word choice list to
enter “of the best”
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Enter “Return of the” press space
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Observe “Jedi” or “king” as options
Bilingual Support: Users can enter words from two languages at once. Swype allows
users to select a language pair (e.g. English and Spanish) for a more
seamless bilingual experience. Words suggested by Swype will
automatically adjust to the bilingual user’s language preference.
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Long press on the Swype key, then tap on the menu icon in the top
left to enter Settings
Select “Languages”
Go to “Download languages” and download Spanish (Español)
Enable Spanish (Español) under “Change current language”
Select “Type in two languages” under your currently selected language
Select English
Return to messaging
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Trace a phrase that includes English and Spanish (e.g. “Teclea mas rapido with
Swype”)
Customization Options
Adjustable Long-Press Delay: Users are able to change the time between pressing a key
and seeing a pop-up for the secondary character of that key.
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Long press on the V key to select the asterisk *
Long press on the Swype key, then tap on the menu icon in the top
left to enter Settings
Select “Settings”, then “Long-press delay”
Adjust long-press delay to the maximum (1000ms), Press “OK”
Return to messaging
Long press on the V key and select *
Set Long-press delay to minimum (250ms)
Long press on the V key and select *
Adjustable Keyboard Height: The height of the keyboard can be
changed in both the portrait and landscape orientations.
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Enter a text field so that the keyboard displays
Press-hold the Swype key, then tap on the menu icon in the top left
to enter Settings
Select “Themes” then select the gear icon on the top right
Tap on “Keyboard height”
Adjust to your desired settings
Return to the keyboard
Quick Keyboard and Layer Switching: Users can easily switch
between the number, edit, handwriting and emoticon layers via a presshold on the symbols key followed by a slide. Users can also quickly switch
to mini left, mini right, split or floating keyboards using the same method.
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Press-hold on the ‘?123’ key
Slide left and right through available layers
Select the number, or edit layer (four outward pointing arrows)
Press ‘ABC’ to return to the primary keyboard
Keyboard Layout Switching: Users of alphabetic languages can choose
which keyboard layout they want to use. For instance, if you want to use
French but are not used to the standard French AZERTY layout, you can
select the more familiar QWERTY keyboard.
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Long press the Swype key and select “Languages” then
“Download languages”
Download “Francais”
After download is complete go back and “Change current
language” to Francais
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Enter messaging (observe: Keyboard is in AZERTY)
Long press the Swype key and select “Languages”
Select the keyboard icon to the right of “Francais”, then select QWERTY
Return to text field and Swype “C’est la vie”
Gestures and Smart Features
Gestures - Punctuation & Editing: Swype from the comma, period or other punctuation to
the Space key to quickly enter punctuation. Editing gestures let you quickly copy, cut, paste
and select all text.
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Open messaging application and enter “Swype on Google Play”
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Swype from the Swype key to A to “Select all Text”
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Swype from the Swype key to X to “Cut”
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Swype from the Swype key to V to “Paste”
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Swype from the Swype key to S to “Search” (text must be selected)
Voice/Text Sync: With Dragon Dictation integrated into the keyboard,
Swype can share your user dictionary across text and speech.
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Press the Microphone Key and speak: “I like chicken tikka masala”.
Tikka is not in the dictionary and will not be dictated correctly
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Tap in “Tikka” and select it from the Word Choice List to add the
word to your dictionary
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Press Microphone key and say: “Watch the power of synchronization”
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Press the Microphone key and now say: “I like chicken tikka masala”. Swype will get
it right.
Smart Touch: Swype learns your unique style of input and continuously
evolves and adapts to your typing patterns. Smart Touch takes into
account common and consistent user typing offsets as well as conditional
probability of the next letter.
True Accessibility
Accessibility Support: The Swype keyboard supports Android’s “Talkback” and “Explore
by Touch” accessibility features. When accessibility features are enabled and the user
inputs text, it will be spoken back to the user. With “Explore by Touch” enabled, users can
navigate through the keyboard and hear each key spoken aloud.
Note: “Talkback” and/or “Explore by touch” must be enabled in Device Settings before this
functionality will be available. Check Settings > Accessibility on your device to enable these
features.
Scrub Gesture Demo: The scrub gesture can be used to select words in the Word Choice
List.
• Type a word (e.g. “help”)
• Navigate from the keyboard up and outside the keyboard to activate this gesture
• Once activated, the keyboard will highlight and announce the first word in the word
choice list
• Make a clockwise circular motion to highlight the next word in the word choice list
• Scroll through a few more words using this clockwise circular gesture
• Make counter-clockwise circular motions to highlight the previous word until you
return to your desired replacement
• Release your finger to input your preferred word choice
Connected Features
Living Language: Swype keeps you always up to date with a real-time, crowd-sourced and
news-derived language model. This gives you immediate access to a
continuously updated corpus of trending words and language from around
the Internet. Swype’s Living Language will also localize your dictionary
with an additional dialect supplement for your preferred language.
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Open messaging application
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Try to Swype one of the trending words
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Delete sentence
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Open Swype Settings, Select “My Words”
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Select Living Language
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Then start Swyping trending words again
Language Downloads: Swype has truly global language support, offering over 80
downloadable languages.
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Open messaging application, long press Swype key to open
Swype Settings
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Select “Language” then select “Download languages”
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Select desired language – once downloaded, language will
indicate “Installed”
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Press Back key to go into “Language Options” and then select
checkbox next to desired language to activate
Dictionary Backup & Sync: Have your up-to-date Swype personal
dictionary on all your Android devices at the same time. Swype
automatically backs up and syncs your personal dictionary in real time, soo you never have
to re-train your Swype keyboard.
Backup and Sync Demo:
Register all Devices with Swype Connect
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Download the latest build of Swype from the Google Play store
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Open messaging application and long press on the Swype key,
then tap on the menu icon in the top left to enter Swype Settings
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Select “My Words”, then select “Register Now” to activate Backup
and Sync
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Complete the registration process by entering the code that was
emailed to you in Swype
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In messaging application input unique words (e.g. names of friends
not already in the dictionary) a few times and select “Add word to
Dictionary”
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Long press Swype key, then tap on the menu icon in the top left to
enter Swype Settings, select “My Words” and then select “Edit My
Dictionary” and you can view your dictionary
Multi-Device Dictionary Sync
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NOTE: If using a new device without Swype previously installed skip to step 3
1. To demo Backup & Sync on a device with Swype previously installed, you must clear
the user dictionary
2. Go to “Android Settings”, “Applications”, “Swype + Dragon ”, and select “Clear Data”
3. Open messaging application; walk through the Swype registration process with your
device email
4. Once activation is complete, go into “Swype Settings,” select “My Words,” and then
select “Edit My Dictionary” and you will see that your dictionary has been completely
restored
5. Go through this process with all your Android devices if desired