Keyboard Apps, we all love a good keyboard in fact, we do more typing on the go than we ever did before. E-mail and social networking has taken over our lives and we need to reply to these comments as fast as we can. In order to do this, we need a good keyboard but, like so many other things on Android it comes to personal preference – often the best isn’t the right one for you. Typing can be a personal thing, there’s no one brilliant solution of course, some of them work well for most people but not everyone. So, let Android Headlines help you out and bring you our list of the Top Ten Keyboard apps for Android! Don’t forget to check out our other Top Ten lists!
10. MessagEase Keyboard
To get things started we’ve got a pretty strange offering here from Exideas, the MessagEase keyboard. Just like you can see from the image above – this is a very different keyboard. It’s designed from the ground up to make you a faster typist on your phone no matter what you’re typing. Of course, there’s going to be a learning curve with anything you’re not familiar with but the devs behind this have put together videos for you. Get to grips with the new keyboard and you could beat the current champion’s 76 words per minute!
9. Hacker’s Keyboard
Sometimes, you miss the things you’re used to when it comes to computers – for instance I have laptops, I need a mouse and a real keyboard to be productive. With tablets however, the typing experience isn’t all that bad however, the Hacker’s Keyboard things you deserve better. This keyboard presents you a full five row keyboard with Esc, Tab and Arrow keys. Of course, this is more suited for tablet users but it can be used on phones as well. Get a familiar layout instantly with this keyboard and get access to some added features like support for ConnectBot over SSH.
8. TouchPal Keyboard
Choice is something that we’ve come to love from being Android users and the folks behind TouchPal Keyboard get that. They’re not here to give us less choice but more, there’s a lot on offer here and you can choose to type away normally on the QWERTY keyboard or slide away a la Swype. Innovatively, TouchPal will predict words as you slide, making those longer words quicker to input. It’s a solid offering that doesn’t look too bad either and there are a good number of languages available.
Play Store Link
7. Jelly Bean Keyboard
I can’t tell a lie – this is straight up the keyboard from Android 4.1 and you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. When you buy a phone from say, HTC or Samsung you’re pretty sure that the keyboard you’ll be typing on isn’t what Google intended – not only does it not look the same, it acts differently as well. Not a lot of fun if you’re used to stock Keyboards of old. So, install this and be greeted with pure Android typing on either your tablet and phone. Perfect if you don’t want to route and hate HTC’s Sense Keyboard – seriously HTC, what’s that about?
6. GO Keyboard
Ah, the Go Dev Team – is there something that they don’t make for Android? If there is I haven’t come across it yet. The Team’s keyboard offering has to be one of their strongest offerings – it’s got theme support, emoji and everything else you’ve come accustomed to. This is the perfect offering you want to personalise you’re typing experience visually. The key layout is nice and standard as well, offering a customizable typing experience without cutting corners.
5. SlideIT Keyboard
It seems that the advent of more accurate touchscreens has come with a hoarde of sliding keyboards, looking to turn typing into a sort of snakes and ladders. With SlideIT Keyboard you can type away normally as well as slide your thumb all over the place. As well as this though there are some interesting features that make for an appealing keyboard. For instance, you can program in shortcuts and resize the keyboard to match your device – perfect if you don’t have a screen the size of a tablet and need to see more keys.
4. Siine Keyboard
One of my favorite keyboards, Siine has been delivery a swiss army knife keyboard for some time now. There’s little that Siine cannot do when it comes to data input. For instance, a lot of the time you’ll be texting about a time or date and with Siine you can input these with the innovative calendar and clock feature. Shortcuts are incredibly easy to setup and to input, making quick texts ridiculously fast. There’s a real good-looking theme here and it fits in with Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean brilliantly! Well worth a look if you want a complete solution for inputting.
Play Store Link
3. Thumb Keyboard
For a long time now Thumb Keyboard has been the best keyboard for tablets thanks to it’s spilt layout and innovative features. Now though, phones are constantly getting bigger and bigger making a split keyboard better for those of us with larger handsets. There’s a lot of themes included with the keyboard as well, mostly to make it fit in with whatever version or skin of Android you’re running. There are some fun customisations as well, like the ability to change the key sound to one of many as well size and layout.
2. AdapTxt Keyboard
We’ve spent quite a bit of time reviewing Adaptxt for phones and tablets. Both occasions we found it to be a stunning offering, with great touchscreen response and fantastic word prediction and correction. There’s some really nice customizations on offer as well, making this a solid all rounder. There are a few themes as well as options for split layouts on tablets. Overall it’s a good package but what makes it really powerful is its add-on feature – bolting industry specific jargon straight into your keyboard. Great if that Nexus 7 was a “business” purchase.
Play Store Link
1. Swiftkey Keyboard
There’s a lot to be said about a keyboard that’s stayed at the top for so long. It’s my personal favorite keyboard day-to-day. However, it’s certainly because of the app’s wealth of options because, realistically there’s very few. The themes are brilliant – give Carbon a whirl on Jelly Bean – and the typing experience is second to none. Whilst I wish there were more options and a less annoying feedback sound there’s nothing better out there. Swiftkey ticks so many boxes and slides effortlessly into your life it’s unreal. I’ve long stayed away from anything else but the stock keyboard but this looks so much better on a 720p display than anything else.
