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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Swype getting dumber?

I was a pretty big fan of Swype when I first started using it. It is an awesome concept; typing by simply dragging my thumb around the screen was almost magical in its usefulness. Before I installed Swype on my HTC Legend, using the stock HTC keyboard on its 3.2" screen was ok for 1 or 2 sentences but much more than that was, to say the least, trying at times.

What makes Swype really effective is its predictive text capabilities. I found it was really good at knowing what I wanted to type-- it would usually pick the right word for what I wanted, even if I wasn't dragging my thumb exactly over each letter.

But lately, in the last few months, the word prediction seems to have gone out the window. Now it picks just plain weird or STUPID words and I'm finding I have to correct a lot of words in every sentence I type. It's not that I accidentally saved a bunch of typos in my personal dictionary, either. I checked... and I am DOWNRIGHT VIGILANT about keeping mis-types out of my personal dictionary. I can't remove some of the weird words out of the Swype dictionary.

Whenever I type "is", it almost always puts in "OS". How often would I ever use the term "OS"? There are many other more bizarre examples... some of the "words" Swype tries to insert don't even sound like actual words to me. I also unchecked other languages in case that was the problem.

I can't figure out why Swype seems to be getting DUMBER. My phone is really underpowered, I've run out of internal phone memory, so that must play a part. I have an annoying bug where I'll swype some words but they won't show up in the text box. I have to exit the program then go back in. But I don't understand why the word prediction is getting worse rather than just staying the same?

Another part of it might be the user: as in, me. Maybe I've gotten so complacent that Swype will predict my words that I'm being sloppy in my dragging over the letters. Technically, software can't grow more stupid but a person certainly can....


It just seems so strange that Swype is not as good as it used to be for me, I haven't updated or changed it for the last few months. Maybe it's just me?



later
don


5 comments:

The Great Baldini said...

I'm actually having the same issue with Swype and it is driving me crazy. "Dint" instead of "don't"? Really? "MN" instead of "?"?

Don said...

Exactly. It's definitely an issue more than user error. What kind of device are you using it on, with what version of Android?

later
don

DD said...

I am having the exact same problems. I think when they finally let us edit The default dictionary, it might be a step in the right direction. But for some stupid reason. They still won't let us delete words that are complete gibberish and made up.

Jenn said...

Insane. I just commented to a friend that either Swype has gotten dumber or I've just become sloppy. I was floored when he said that there was a lot of info on this floating around the internets. It's really irritating me. I get "dint" over "don't" almost every single time and it just seems like the last few weeks it's gotten progressively worse. At least I know that I'm not the only one!

Anonymous said...

I've suspected that it's learning words from the cloud, as well as from any accounts linked to the Android. It's ridiculous, considering thatin doing so, it's preferring the lowest common denominator of spelling & grammatical errors.