Swype for Android is Coming

We’ve gone from scrolling through letters on our dialpads (thanks, Motorola Razr), to pounding out epic texts on our thumbs with QWERTY pads (see LG EnV) back to hunting and pecking with our touchscreen keyboards (clicking with the BlackBerry Storm helps). So, what’s next? Swype.

Swype is a startup that made its debut at TechCrunch50 and is made by the fine minds who brought you the predictive T9 input, for those of you who remember it. With Swype, you don’t have to painstakingly tap each key – you just swipe your finger from one letter to the next without lifting your finger (kind of like you were playing Bookworm or Pathwords), passing over incorrect letters as well. Swype then guesses what you’re going for with startling accuracy.

In recent speed tests, Swype on a Samsung Omnia II beat iPhone by a long chalk (though, of course, speeds are highly subjective when it comes to cell phone keyboarding skills). Swype’s own website says that it gets 40 words per minute on a touchscreen and can be used with a stylus or a finger. There’s a 65,000 word learning dictionary, too, meaning Swype will learn your vocabulary as well as the nicknames of all your best friends. There are multiple languages available and the SDK is available, which means we’ll likely see more applications and software taking advantage of Swype.

According to Swype, the Verizon Samsung Omnia II, which runs Windows Mobile, will be the first phone to feature Swyping text entry. But Washington Post claims that Swype will be rolled out on Android phones in the first quarter of 2010, which means we may see some game changing updates to the T-Mobile Samsung Behold and the T-Mobile G1.

Stay tuned – Swyping just might be the way we text in the future.

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