San Francisco-based Fleksy offers predictive text typing that’s so intuitive it can be used without even a glance at a screen, and now the app is finally exiting beta on Android. Fleksy works by analyzing a user’s typing pattern, no matter how sloppy, and making predictions about what keys they’re trying to hit, and it does this so well it enables even users with impaired or no vision to use a touchscreen keyboard.
Fleksy founders Kosta Eleftheriou and Ioannis Verdelis have been building Fleksy and refining it for years now, and Eleftheriou previously built an app called BlindType that offered similar functionality, which he later sold to Google in 2010. Fleksy exiting beta is a big milestone for the startup, and the company is also introducing multiple language support to the beta version of Fleksy, which will exist alongside the $3.99 full version.
“We have adjusted a lot of the gestures, user interface, tutorial, menus, as well as the algorithms themselves based on user feedback,” Verdelis explained in an interview, when asked what’s changed between when Fleksy first launched in beta and now. “We have a very active community of about 35,000 members and we engage them regularly.”
As for the multi-lingual support, that’s a key differentiator for any kind of software replacement keyboard, and Verdelis says that Fleksy can add new ones quickly and with improved accuracy versus their competitors.
“Due to our unique approach to the task of typing, we can roll out languages much quicker than others have expanded,” he said. “We will be launching four new languages in the beta program simultaneously with the Google play launch, but we have 25 languages under development in total, including Asian languages, right now.”
Aside from the Android launch and beta improvements, Fleksy is also getting closer to officially launching its iOS SDK with partners who have incorporated the software. The SDK, which we covered previously, will allow devs on Apple’s mobile platform to build Fleksy into their apps as a replacement for Apple’s own native keyboard. It’s not quite as convenient as letting the user replace their keyboard system-wide, but Apple doesn’t allow that kind of access for third-party devs, and so this workaround is the best possible solution, akin to what Google has done with Chrome on iOS.
Verdelis says that we’ll hear more about iOS and the first apps to use the SDK “soon,” so it’ll be interesting to see who they’ve signed up. The company has come a long way on the back of its existing funding of just under $4 million, and looks poised to continue its product growth quickly now that it’s out of closed beta.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/fleksy-android-keyboard-exits-beta/
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