Neither had I, until I was sent an Nokia N8 from ThreeUK that already had Swype installed. Well, actually, it was a while after I was sent it that I figured it out, when the very nice man in the local carphonewarehouse shop showed me how it works.
I’d gone in to check out the size and feel of a couple of phones for dp. He’s been increasingly intrigued by the succession of phones I’ve trialled for both ThreeUK and WomWorldNokia, and had decided it was finally time to go smart. And Swype turned out to be the deciding factor…
You see, Swype is a text input system for touchscreen phones. It’s still in beta, so you won’t find it in the android market, you have to go direct to the website I linked above and install it, and your phone will probably scream all about the dangers of installing unverified software. Meh. These things happen. Anyway, how you use it is instead of tapping each letter, you drag your finger across the screen through the letters you want, and it fills in the words. It is *way* faster than typing each letter, and surprisingly accurate when you get the hang of it. You can add words to its dictionary too, and even take them out if they are getting in the way of words you use.
Once dp had seen it in action on the N8 he was sold. (It is available via the Ovi market if you’ve a Nokia phone rather than an android, I installed it on the C7 I was trialling from WomWorld, and it worked fine, though slightly differently to the N8.) Which meant that he chose a Samsung Galaxy Apollo, at that point on offer with his network for ??80 payg (if they’ve still got it it’s an absolute steal, lovely little phone), meaning he could swap in his existing sim and keep using his ancient unlimited data plan, *and* have superfast text entry.
I did have a few teething issues when I installed it on my Wildfire, but nothing a re-install didn’t solve. Now I’ve no idea how I coped without it, texting and tweeting is effortless and quick, and great fun too.
Go on, take a look. It’s a fantastic tool.