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Posts Tagged ‘omnia’

I’ve been pretty pumped about Swype’s ultra-speedy alternative typing solution for touchscreen devices ever since it first debuted at TechCrunch50 2008. My excitement only grew when it finally made its way to a handset, the Omnia II, just last month – but as I’m not the biggest fan of the OS that powers that device, my thumbs were left twiddling until an Android port was released.

Earlier this morning, I got my hands-on a pre-release copy of just that: Swype for Android. So how is it? In a word: Great. If you want more than that, you’ll have to dive behind the jump for a hands-on impressions and video.

Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch >>

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A year ago, Swype launched a new way to type on a touchscreen phone at TechCrunch50. Swype was created by the inventor of the T9 predictive typing system used on most phones today because he felt that new text input methods for small touchscreens are sorely needed. Today, the startup announced the first phone to use the technology will be the Samsung Omnia II on Verizon.

As you can see in the video above, which shows a side-by-side comparison of typing on the Omnia II versus on an iPhone, the way you type with Swype is you literally swipe your finger from one letter to the next as fast as you can. In the video, the Swypist beats the iPhone typist hands down, so to speak. But the comparison is more illustrative than definitive. A practiced iPhone typer can bang out a few sentences just as fast. I tried it myself and was able to basically tie the Swype user on the video. Still, I’ll withhold judgment until I can actually try a Swype phone myself.

More phones with Swype built in will be launched next year. The Omnia II is a Windows Mobile phone. But Swype will be included in a new Android phone in the first quarter of 2010.

Will Swype give Android an edge over the iPhone?

Note: The actual video above is less than 2 minutes long. Ignore the 26-minute indicated time. That is a mistake.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

A few weeks ago there was a lot of excitement surrounding the launch of Google Maps Navigation. Unfortunately, it only worked with Android 2.0 and up, which means only the newest devices right now, like the Droid. But today Google has given an early holiday present to its other Android users: Maps Navigation to anyone running at least Android 1.6 (Donut).

Yes, that means anyone with an Android device can now use this awesome new feature. This even includes users with the original Android phone, the G1. But apparently not all of the features found in Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 will work in the 1.6 version. The one example Google gives is that you can’t use the “navigate to” voice command.

This new version of Maps Navigation also includes a new feature included called “Layers” which allows you to put various information such as Wikipedia articles on top of your map as an overaly.

The update is available in the Android Market today, obviously for free. Sadly, the service is still U.S.-only, and Google warns that it’s still in beta, something which we’ve come to ignore the meaning of thanks to Google’s own Gmail.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

It looks like Samsung might have hired the same folks responsible for their last Omnia viral video to conjure up one for the HD i8910 (which, depending on where you live, may or may not go by the OmniaHD.) Read the rest of this entry > >

More:
Samsung HD i8910 (OmniaHD) is a witch. [Plus a video sample]