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Swype 3.0 beta available now: Optimised for Android tablets, improved typo correction

Our torrid love affair with Swype and SwiftKey continues unabated here at Recombu Towers. We like them both so much we can’t fully commit to one or the other. After SwiftKey recently wowed us with the beta of SwiftKey X, Swype has just batted a come hither look in our direction, showing off its sassy beta of Swype 3.0.

The big news about Swype 3.0 is that it’s been reformatted to work better on Honeycomb tablets. As well as having to option to make use of a full screen keyboard, you’ll be able to shrink the keyboard making it easier for you to hold your Xoom in one hand and type with the other.

The minimised version of the keyboard can be dragged left and right across the bottom half of the screen, so whether you’re right or left handed, you’ll be able to move the keyboard into a position that best suits you.

Have a look at the videos below for a better idea of how this works. Try not to chuckle at that ‘Stroke it and Poke it’ tagline…

As well as this, the bread and butter of what made Swype great in the first place – faster and more accurate typing – has been given an overhaul.

The first cool thing to note is that the window that popped up to offer you corrections has been scrapped; word predictions now appear in a horizontal bar above the main Qwerty area. This is great news as we found that the pop-up window would obscure what you were writing a lot of the time.

As well as this, auto-corrections feel a lot more accurate thanks to the new Tap Correction engine, which Swype says allows for easier switching between the Swype way of doing things and the old ‘hunt and peck’ method of typing.

If your worried about Swype auto-correcting your vernacular as you type, every time you enter a word that it doesn’t recognise, you’ll be given the option to directly add it to the dictionary.

The Swype 3.0 beta is available to download now on Android phones as well as tablets, although the beta apparently doesn’t work if your phone comes with Swype pre-installed.

Additionally, the Swype blog says to uninstall any previous versions of Swype you have on your phone before downloading the Swype 3.0 beta. To register for the beta, click on the big link below.

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