I can't agree with the grandparent about type + swipe being anywhere near the speed of a keyboard, but in my experience, writing in other languages using swipe is just as fast as in English (at least for other languages that use the Latin alphabet). I frequently use swiping for bilingual English + Romanian (a language which tends to have much longer words than English) conversations, and it generally works very well, even bilingually. I would note that I'm using some Microsoft keyboard for Android, I forget its name, and it is explicitly configured for both languages.
I swipe heavily (using the original 'swype' app). It's still much faster than the others, and I've tried almost all of them, including the Google keyboard. Also, everyone else who sees me typing using that tries to learn the same. It's really more convenient than traditional touch typing.
I am using the AOSP keyboard and it does support swipe, but I'm not sure it's any better than just typing the old way. It constantly picks obscure words I've never seen in my life instead of the obvious one that everyone uses every day.
I use swiping on a Samsung phone and regularly write in three languages (English, Swedish, and Dutch). While there are some annoyances, I find it still speeds it up a lot as long as I change keyboard language (done by swiping left or right on the space bar) to match the language I'm currently using.
I like Swype as well, but Swiftkey supports multiple languages and that's a great plus for people from other countries that use english terms all the time.
Swiping seems to be efficient mostly in english. I had a try on android and it was just exhausting while being unforgiving for CJK type input.
Just to say, having a decent keyboard is still important to a lot of people. And Apple has effectively made efforts in this regard to have a good keyboard experience on the iPad.
I disagree. I think swipe sounds like a hideous kludge.
Look at how people type - there are fully trained touch typists, people using most of the fingers in the right place most of the time, people using two fingers on each hand, ending up with the hunt and peck.
I'd be amazed if Swipe can cope with all of those, and if it can they deserve a patent.
Swiping is a blessing on iPhone Mini, but it's not available in my language for some reason. Multilingual input, I can just start typing in English or Czech and two words in, the keyboard knows. And even for normal tap-typing, the accuracy is a bit better because the keyboard apparently learns from your mistakes and basically builds a virtual keyboard with shifted letters underneath the visible one.
(to be clear I'm petty enough to be willing to give it all up for not having to stare at a fucking Bing button, so I uninstalled it)
Using swipe I can write on a smart phone without looking at the screen. Problem is some auto corrects will be wrong. Not perfect, but close. Longer words do better.
The only reason swipe works so well is because of how well people know the QWERTY layout, though. You'd have to have a pretty unique situation for it to be worth your time to thoroughly learn a new keyboard layout just to speed up typing on your phone.
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