ShapeWriter vs Swype

[sooperhooper]

Just DL'd shapewriter and it's better than I thought! Haven't used any of the others and I don't think I'm going to try them.

 

[NetNathan]

I have used them both quite a bit. All of the above comments are valid and describe pro's and con's very accurately.

My problem with Swype was that on a message of any length it "garbled" the message and the recipient got junk. I was never able to detect any consistant reason for this...just that if the message was longer than a couple two or three lines it didn't go through correctly.

Shapewriter is a pain to use. I have pretty big fingers and the keyboard layout is small...but it's accurate and I haven't ever had a garbled message.

The OEM virtual keyboard has always been perfect regardless of the length of the message.

I have to say that I liked Swype but can't tolerate wondering if my message was rec'd as I intended it. I accept the PITA factor of using Shapewriter and hope that they will go back to the original layout of their keyboard which actually kind of similar to Swype's rather than maintain the pathetically tiny thing they have now.

For me, Shapewriter is the way to go and if I have to do complex entry's then I just use the OEM virtual keyboard. My trial has expired on Swype. Maybe I'll take another look at it in a few months. Hope all this helps...:icon_ devil:

The official release of the beta version of Swype for Moto Droid came out today. It is well worth the time and effort to uninstall the expired version and install the new version--it even has some new features, such as automatic capitalization. They claim it is a limited release, so you might want to get registered right away.

Where did you find the official beta release for the Moto Droid?
Is it the version that will time out?

 

[qat]

So, I saw the big thread about Swype vs. SlideIT vs. ShapeWriter. After trying out Swype and ShapeWriter, i've found that ShapeWriter is all I need.

Swype was pretty great, but had a few cons to it. I couldn't get used to the double letter technique. You have to kind of zig-zag or loop around a letter to get the "tt" or "oo" effect. With ShapeWriter, it automatically either suggests the word with 2 letters, or assumes you meant to have the double character.

One of the things I really liked about Swype was that it was more accurate when I was zooming across the keyboard, but it had a lot more options when I had longer words, that didn't really seem relevant. ShapeWriter was more accurate with longer letter words, but some short words don't even come up as options (the word "like" gave me some trouble). Also, ShapeWriter had some unusual words in the dictionary.

The other thing that kind of made me think twice about Swype was that it's not available on the market. You have to have access to the "beta testing", which is basically anybody who requests it. It shows that they're not confident enough to put it on the market, most likely because it will tarnish their reputation?

On the flip side, you can not (or I could not) figure out how to add passwords or e-mail addresses to the dictionary with ShapeWriter, but you could with Swype. Capitalization was kind of tricky with Swype, whereas ShapeWriter automatically uses an upper case character for the first letter of a sentence, and adds a period after two spaces to create a new sentence.

jsh1120 had questioned the recent updates to ShapeWriter, and i'll say that as of late, it was worked flawlessly for me, with the exception of some very short words. "on" vs. "in".

Anyways, for a quick reference...

ShapeWriter
Pros

• Better with long words
• Some automatic punctuation
• Available on Market (Not really a PRO but speaks for the software)

Cons

• Weak dictionary initially
• Can't add emails or passwords
• Difficulty recognizing short words

Swype
Pros

• Great dictionary at installation
• Ability to store special characters in dictionary
• Automatic addition of words to dictionary after punching in letters

Cons

• Not available on Market
• Loop action to double letters
• Mechanism to capitalize letters seemed difficult to me

Conclusion: I'll be sticking to ShapeWriter for now. I'd like to see Swype when it is officially available to the public, since now we're working with a "closed" copy. I think that they both have done a very good job at accomplishing the same goal, but, it's all up to preference. I think ShapeWriter solved the problem the same way I would have, so it's my App of Choice here. I'll keep an eye on Swype though. Unfortunately, i'm not interested in paying for SlideIT .

 

[hookerdj]

ive used swype and slideit slideit is very accurate but i love how swype builds a user dictionary very very fast

 

[VOLTIS5]

I haven't tried out Swype yet (cause i can't find it on the market for some reason) but i have been using SW for a while now. It gets annoying at times when i'm trying to spell out little words but for the most part its pretty accurate. For some reason though the fast i try to type the more accurate it is :icon_eek: