Some time in 2015 I left SwiftKey behind and started depending on the built in keyboard of my phone (Samsung) which I guess had been been licensed or copied from SwiftKey. The reason was that while the predictions where good it had started picking up some bad habits, particularly it would capitalize the letter i even in Norwegian sentences, something that doesn't make sense at all. It had also removed the option to disable auto correct at some point which meant it would “correct” perfectly fine words into funny, embarrassing or dangerous ones (just like iOS do today if you don't stop it.)

Today I reinstalled SwiftKey. The reasons ar GBoard, the standard keyboard app in Android One

• just can't understand that you can write perfectly fine English on a Norwegian keyboard and therefore insist that you install both (even if it allows you to have English predictions on your Norwegian keyboard as soon as you have installed the English keyboard.)

• this would have been OK if it wasn't for the fact that keyboard layout would sometimes change for apparently no good reason.

So far SwiftKey has impressed me today. Intelligent predictions, no snags, neither in English nor in Norwegian.

And GBoard, just like SwiftKey 4 years ago just doesn't seem to get it.

One thing to be aware of though:

If privacy is important to you, make sure you take the time to prevent sending of snippets back to SwiftKey. These settings are located in at least two different places, just so you are aware.

So far I've been right. It works a whole lot better for me than the Macbook pro ever did. Certain aspects of it are better than my Android phone, most notably the sharing system that is a mess on my Nokia 6, even with Android One.

Another big advantage is that it is fastand doesn't drop the state every time I switch back and forth between a couple of apps.

I also got a pen for it as well as GoodNotes, and this combination has proven to be able to replace my notebooks in surprisingly short time, which is awesome as it means I can now carry my notebook with me to work and back without being afraid both

• losing access to my notes
• having someone else browsing my notes

The last one shouldn't be that much of a problem anyway but it still would feel very weird.

I also use it for reading manuals, deleting mail and lightweight Internet browsing. For “research browsing” however it is next to useless for me compared to a real Firefox with Tree Style Tabs and a good pinboard extension.

If it continues to work well, my next phone might be a punkt mp02.

Filed under #gadgets #productivity #android #ipad