Nuance is discontinuing its Swype keyboard for Android and iOS

[Shawn Knight]

Nuance, developer of the once popular Swype keyboard for Android and iOS devices, quietly said earlier this month that it was discontinuing its iOS offering. The announcement flew under the radar for most but is now coming into light due to changes impacting the Android version.

In announcing the iOS version’s fate, the product team said Nuance will no longer be offering the Swype keyboard in the App Store. They apologized for leaving the direct-to-consumer keyboard business but said the change was necessary to allow them to concentrate on developing their AI solutions for sale directly to businesses.

Nothing was mentioned about the Android version in the iOS announcement.

Recently, however, a Reddit user contacted Nuance about an issue with the Android app and received the following statement over e-mail (via Tech Times):

“Nuance will no longer be updating the Swype+Dragon keyboard for Android. We're sorry to leave the direct-to-consumer keyboard business, but this change is necessary to allow us to concentrate on developing our AI solutions for sale directly to businesses. We hope you enjoyed using Swype, we sure enjoyed working with the Swype community.”

Nuance acquired Seattle-based start-up Swype in 2011 for $102.5 million in cash.

A quick check of Apple’s App Store reveals that Swype is indeed no longer offered. The keyboard remains on Google Play as of writing although I wouldn’t expect it to stick around for much longer. In other words, if you want it, I’d grab it ASAP.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/73362-nuance-discontinuing-swype-keyboard-android-ios.html

 

[Capaill]

Use Swiftkey instead. It allows a swiping motion over the keyboard and is probably a similar user experience.

 

[hahahanoobs]

No big deal. Even stock keyboards allow you to swipe.

 

[OutlawCecil]

I've tried Swiftkey many times and can never get it to work/look the way I want it to. Fleksy has been my go-to keyboard for years now. So streamlined and powerful.

 

[Panda218]

Swype was great in the early years, but all other keyboards have caught up and they never really made any other advancements.

 

[Rippleman]

I can't STAND to type normal anymore and prefer Gboard on android far more than any other swype-type keyboard. Even then I almost always use G-voice so no keyboard at all.

 

[KipPrdy]

Swype keyboard has Dragon for voice typing, which I've found far superior to anything else. Not only is the recognition far more accurate, I can also use formatting commands, tell it open parenthesis and so on. Much better than switching back and forth trying to use Google's speech recognition with Swiftkey.

Getting so annoyed with companies buying some other company, only to completely shut down what that company does.

Why not just turn the product loose? Sell it for a dollar plus some royalties to whoever wants to carry on with it.

Same thing happened to Level Money, which I found to be the best app for money tracking - somebody bought it and then just discontinued it.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Sorry to be negative, but Swype has sucked since the first day I tried using it. About half of every sentence I have to go back and manually fix. Maybe because I have large fingers? Nothing but a lot of headaches. Good riddance.

 

[Rippleman]

Sorry to be negative, but Swype has sucked since the first day I tried using it. About half of every sentence I have to go back and manually fix. Maybe because I have large fingers? Nothing but a lot of headaches. Good riddance.

I have noticed screen size, finger length, individual natural flow really does make a difference to how well the system predicts what you want. Like for me, on a 4.5" screen its horrendously bad, on a 6" screen same thing, but a 5.1" screen it's drastically better. I guess, based on luck, one hopes you have a phone that just happens to match all other characteristics.