MessagEase (paid w/ TWO month free trial)
This keyboard has a very innovative, yet unusual keyboard layout to optimize text entry. Each letter is positioned on the keyboard based on its frequency of use in the English language, as well as its letter-pair frequency. This is done to minimize finger movement to speed up text entry. It has a few, large keys making it very finger friendly. The most frequent characters can be entered with just a single tap. The less frequent keys are entered with a drag or slide (a little similar to TouchPal if you are familiar with that). There is a learning curve with this keyboard, but they have step by step plan to become more efficient and faster while typing with this keyboard. It can be found
here. Supposedly, it only takes about 1-2 days to become proficient. You can find out more about it on its
homepage, where there are quite a few video and flash tutorials, as well as videos of it in action.
(pic taken from geek.com)
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ShapeWriter (paid but with a 30 day free trial)
This one is really neat. No longer will you "hunt and peck" for the keys, instead you slide your finger across the screen stopping on the next letter. ShapeWriter then recognizes the word that is roughly connected by that one gesture. In essence, you are tracing the word from key to key. Neat concept, check out the
video, although it is an android video there is a WM version found on
their site.
pictured on the iphone
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TenGO Thumb (Paid but has a 14 day free trial)
This is quite the different keyboard that many of you have probably never seen. It only uses 6 large alphabet keys. That's it, and what makes it even more unique is that it doesn't type the actual letter you are typing (although there is a way to strike a specific letter). Instead, it uses a T9-like dictionary-based approach to actually "guess" the word you are typing. That makes it sound far more inaccurate than it really is. Read more about the features in the
FAQ, as well as its
home page. (There is a video demo that is downloaded from the home page, but here are 2 youtube videos of it in action:
video 1 and
video 2 [the type in video 2 is in another language but you can see it in action better])
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TenGO v2.10 (Paid but has a
30 day free trial)
This keyboard is similar to TenGo Thumb in the fact that it still only uses 6 keys for the entire alphabet (individual letters can be typed by striking that letter). However, it is not as finger friendly, but comes with more features. It has more accessible buttons on the interface (like punctuation and numbers), much larger dictionary, takes up less screen space, and the ability to add user defined words easily. Although stylus oriented, it is one of the fastest keyboards to type with because of it word prediction technology (far better than standard T9). Read more about it on its
FAQ page as well as its
hompage. (It also has built in tutorials.)
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InterKey (Paid but with trial)
This multilingual on-screen keyboard, with over 60 national layouts! It comes in 2 versions: Standard and Professional (Professional has an autocomplete word feature). In addition to the standard keyboard (pic on left), both versions also have a Large Keys keyboard in an effort to make it more finger friendly (pic on right). The selected key is zoomed in on, just release you finger to type that key, or slide your finger over to select another one. Find out more about it on its
website.
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WorldLogic (paid)
Uses the patented WordChunking Technology, which allows the user to type large words after only a few letter inputs. It utilizes predictive text allowing for speedier entry of text. Also, it learns from your typing patterns, adjusting to what words you type the most. Find out more about it
here.
pic take from pocketnow.com