swype?

[chosendude]

Is there a swype application for the HTC hero? (or beta.apk i could use?)

thanks!

 

[Xyro]

It's closed beta only at the moment, unfortunately.

I don't see why they don't just release it to the market already, the demand is massive and the 'beta' works just fine.

 

[DaWeav]

I'd downloaded this one before the link goes dead. It is skinned grey for the Hero instead of the standard Swype blue.

EDIT: New link is at the bottom of that thread.

 

[Xyro]

I don't know if posting links to the beta here is allowed or not (the old leaked .apk wasn't allowed), but do a quick search over at the XDA Forums and you can find the actual beta .apk.

 

[m1.carson]

Hi,

I queried them directly to find out when I could get the full version :-


Thanks for contacting us. The short answer is, we're not sure when Swype will be available for purchase. Our current business model is OEM licensing, which means that the only way to use a feature-complete version of Swype is to purchase a device that ships with our keyboard pre-installed. We would like to get to a direct-download model eventually, but there are two very large challenges to that approach:

1) Support. Even with our current Android beta alone, we are already swamped and unable to handle all of the support emails that we've received. We are a small company and simply don't have the resources to offer users the support that they should expect for a finished, paid-for product. It is much more reasonable, at this stage, to partner with large organizations like Samsung and T-Mobile that already have huge support structures in place.

2) (and more importantly....) Device integration. Swype isn't just an app; it's a keyboard-the most widely used piece of software on a device. It interacts with nearly every single application on the phone. As such, it's almost more of a system component than an application. For each device release, we do a tremendous amount of testing and we *always* find significant inconsistencies based on a combination of the OS, the device specs, the OEM UI implementation, the touchscreen hardware, the touchscreen driver, etc. Additionally, some features won't be implemented at all without an OEM's engineering resources (specifically double-tap editing and cursor restore, which must be integrated at the ROM level). What that means is that we need to do a large amount of work for each device for us to be sure that you, the end user, have a good experience entering text with Swype. And that is our goal - a great user experience. There's no way to guarantee that the software won't be glitchy, and no way to include all of the intended features, without building Swype into the ROM-and that takes OEM cooperation.

So, we do eventually want to offer Swype for download; however, both of these issues will have to be overcome before we'll consider going that route. Thanks for contacting us, and please look to our website (swype.com) for any news.

Max.