Nuance's Swype Keyboard Gets Updated For Ice Cream Sandwich

When it comes to Android's built-in touchscreen keyboard, you either love it or you hate it. And if you're in the latter category, chances are you've at least heard of Swype. It's one of the most popular alternatives to the default keyboard and is so intuitive that it's helped set a world record for texting. Because it's just so on the leading edge like that, it has been updated to work on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Yeah, so that 1% of the Android community that actually have the latest version of Google's OS can get the latest and greatest version of Swype. It is said to be even more optimized for user control and ergonomics. It also includes a word suggestion feature for those who would rather tap a word after they've typed in a few letters than bother to finish writing the entire word themselves. Nuance becomes one of very few small app developers that have taken the time to optimize for ICS.

Because of the difficulty manufacturers have had in upgrading their devices to the latest Android platform, there hasn't been a lot of excitement surrounding ICS apps. It's suffering from a similar fate as Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which was designed exclusively for tablets but has had such a limited reach that developers have largely been unmotivated to invest resources there. For an app like Swype, though, which prides itself on being available to as many Android users as possible, upgrading constantly is part of the process.

[via GigaOM]