I’ve been using the Swype beta on my Droid for about a week. The only reason I tried it out when I heard the beta was opened was because I hate the soft keyboard for Android. Despite owning my Droid for a few months, I struggle once I get past a few sentences on the soft keys, and usually pop the hard keyboard out for any serious typing. Yes, I am one of the 4 Droid owners who actually likes the hard keyboard!

So I headed into it not knowing much about Swype, but figuring anything had to be better than the default keyboard. Swype is a bit different than a regular keyboard; instead of lifting your finger and tapping each key, you swipe your finger across the keyboard to the letters of the word you want, and Swype attempts to correctly interpret what you want to say. I downloaded it, and within the first five minutes hated it. I couldn’t understand how everyone sang the praises of this awesome program, when I could barely get a sentence out without it taking forever. By the end of the first day, I’d warmed up to it considerably. Like all things, it took practice.

Typing Test with the stock Android keyboard, 3-7-10

Typing Test Hard Keyboard 3-7-10

I realized if I wanted to really get to know Swype, I needed to commit to using it as my main virtual keyboard. But I needed a baseline, so I could determine if practice really did make perfect. So on March 7th, I headed over to iPhone Typing Test and did three tests: once with Swype, once with the slideout hard keyboard, and once with the regular soft keyboard. Needless to say, the Swype results were nothing to write home about.

Over the course of the past week, I learned more of Swype’s tricks. The hardest bit to remember is swiping for punctuation. It seems instinctive to just tap the period and move on, but doing so messes up the predictive capitalization. Only swiping across from the period to the space bar automatically created a space and capitalized the next letter. Punctuation, adding new letters and capitalization all involve special twists and shortcuts as you swipe. I’m the stubborn type who never believes in reading the manual, and I finally broke down and watched the videos on Swype.com as well as the tutorial that came installed with the keyboard. I hate to admit it, because I always want to believe I can learn through sheer force of will, but reading the freaking manual really did help!

Typing Test stock Android keyboard, 3-14-10

Typing Test Swype 3-14-10

Typing Test Hard Keyboard 3-14-10

So after a week, did my typing improve? Definitely! While the typing test results look pretty similar, I found overall that Swype is more forgiving of minor errors. Because it works off the general movements, extraneous letters don’t get thrown in and muck up your typing as much. And the predictive text for when it couldn’t pinpoint what I was trying to write was actually fairly helpful and accurate most of the time. Both things that don’t get picked up by a typing test but definitely make a difference in day-to-day experience.

The Swype beta is currently closed, but you can sign up to receive updates on when it will reopen here. It’s not only a fun way to impress your friends with how cool your Android phone is, it makes typing out messages actually fun!

If you’ve been using the beta, what are your thoughts? Share them below!