Product review: A search for the best keyboard app for Android phones and tablets.

If you like typing quickly on your touch-screen phone or tablet and don't like over stressing your fingers, then you need a good sliding (gesture+dictionary) based keyboard. One where you can slide your finger over the letter in the word, without raising it, and the keyboard knows which word you meant.

Some of the more popular keyboards for Android that support sliding based typing are Google Keyboard, Swype, SwiftKey and Kii Keyboard.

The criterias of my comparison of these keyboards are as following:

• Prediction accuracy
• Spacing
• Keyboard layout
• Multilanguage support
• Themes
• Additonal features (e.g. handwriting)

Total scores are rounded up.

Google keyboard

Total score 2/5.
This keyboard by Google is free and is the default for Android 4.3, but can be downloaded and installed on previous versions e.g. Android 4.2.

• Prediction accuracy - 5/5 - great for English.
• Spacing  - 1/5 - automatically inserts spaces between words - good for text, obstructive for usernames and URLs.
• Keyboard layout - 1/5 - only digits are available via long press, 2 numbers/symbols screens.
• Multilanguage support - 1/5 - doesn't support sliding in other languages, can change languages via language key.
• Themes - 2/5 - single theme, however, the theme blends in the the OS and has high enough contrast.
• Additonal features (e.g. handwriting) - 0/5 - none.

Swype (+ Dragon)

Total score 5/5.
This keyboard costs about 4 USD.

• Prediction accuracy - 5/5 - great for English and other languages.
• Spacing  - 4/5 - can be turned on or off via settings, no guesture for fast change of this setting.
• Keyboard layout - 4/5 - digits and many symbols are available via long press, however, symbol order isn't the same as in desktop keyboard, 2 number/symbol screens.
• Multilanguage support - 5/5 - supports sliding in other languages, can change language via long space click or guesture.
• Themes - 5/5 - multiple themes, including themes that blend in the the OS and have high contrast and themes with larger buttons (less gaps between buttons).
• Additonal features (e.g. handwriting) - 5/5 - handwriting, change previously typed word's capitalization via slide from Swype key to Shift key, change language via slide from Sype key to space, close keyboard via slide from Swype key to Enter/Backspace keys, select all/copy/cut/paste via slide from Swype to a/c/x/v.

ShiftKey

Total score 4/5.
This keyboard costs about 3 USD.

• Prediction accuracy - 5/5 - great for English and other languages.
• Spacing  - 4/5 - can be turned on or off via settings, no guesture for fast change of this setting.
• Keyboard layout - 4/5 - digits and many symbols are available via long press, however, symbol order isn't the same as in desktop keyboard, 2 number/symbol screens.
• Multilanguage support - 5/5 - supports sliding in other languages, can change language via slide sideways on spacebar.
• Themes - 4/5 - multiple themes, including themes that have high contrast and themes with larger buttons (less gaps between buttons).
• Additonal features (e.g. handwriting) - 1/5 - change previously typed word's capitalization via long click on Shift key (after backspace to get to it).

Kii Keyboard

Total score 3.5/5.
This keyboard is free.

• Prediction accuracy - 5/5 - great for English and other languages.
• Spacing  - 1/5 - automatically inserts spaces between words - good for text, obstructive for usernames and URLs.
• Keyboard layout - 4/5 - digits and many symbols are available via long press, however, symbol order isn't the same as in desktop keyboard, 2 number/symbol screens.
• Multilanguage support - 5/5 - supports sliding in other languages, can change language via click on language button or long click on spacebar.
• Themes - 4/5 - multiple themes, including themes that blend in the the OS and have high contrast.
• Additonal features (e.g. handwriting) - 1/5 - slide from key to space for alternative symbol (as faster alternative to long click).

Site review: Shopping sites and UX (User eXperience)

Do the major sites still have anything to learn?

Amazon.com

Amazon is one of the most known online shopping sites, a giant the started as a bookstore then expanded into a market place for books and almost anything and later for its vast cloud services. Amazon is well known for its 1-click ordering, enabling users to order a single item with first adding it to its cart and then checking out.

What could Amazon improve?

• Don't limit functionality - Try searching for a product, e.g. "iPhone", you'll get a list of results, but not option to sort until you have limited your search to a single category (department). This may seem reasonable to the designers, however, in some cases it isn't clear which "department" the product would be under, especially since, unlike in physical depart stores, each item may be offered by a different seller, each with a different view of which department the product belongs to, and sometimes the same product may be under multiple departments simultaneously.
• Basic sorting - Once you have chosen a department and you want to sort by price, there is no option to consider the shipping costs in the sorting.
• Straightforward costs - Choose a product, if you don't live in the US, the shopping costs aren't relevant to you, even though you are logged in and have a registered shipping address. In fact, to find out how much it actually costs, including shipping, you have to add only that single item to your cart, then either click on estimate shipping costs, or, as before this shortcut was offered, click on purchase, then discover the actual costs only when you have to confirm your payment.
• Location aware search - An option to filter out items that can't be shipped to your location.
• More effective search - An option to filter out results based on specifications e.g. battery capacity.

eBay.com

eBay is one probably the most well known online market place.

What could eBay improve?

• Location aware search - eBay has a lot of useful sorting and filtering options, but no option to filter out items that can't be shipped to your location.
• Product reviews - Reviews, recommendations and feedback on items that are sold commercially (with a quantity of more than one available).
• Advanced automatic bidding -  if there are multiple similar items that you want to bid for, an option to bid for an item only if you don't win another bid could be useful.

DX.com

Deal eXtreme is known as cheap store for buying Chinese products, its variety isn't large, but its cheap prices and buyer feedback per product makes it a convenient site to use.

What could DX improve?

• More effective search - An option to filter out results based on specifications e.g. battery capacity.

AliExpress.com

Alibaba Express is a store where you can order a large variety of products (sometimes only in small lots and not single pieces) from China for cheap prices. AliExpress is a spin-off of its mother site, Alibaba, where many products can only be purchased in larger lots.

What could AliExpress improve?

• Security - If you have yet to sign up to AliExpress or Alibaba, you may notice, that despite the fact the login page is secure (https), the signup page is not, therefore, you will be sending your name, email and password unencrypted over the Internet, from anyone on the way to see (e.g. anyone connected to the same public Wifi).
• Trust - If you try to contact AliExpress support, you get a page with a small variety of questions you can ask, if your question isn't on the list or the answers don't help you, you can use the automated response system. If it doesn't suggest useful questions and answers that may be related to yours or the answer isn't useful, you can't ask to be forwarded to a human being, in fact, the only way to contact actual people is via the "community" forums, which require you to register and log-in first.

Product review: BLU Dash 4.5

BLU's new Dash 4.5 is cheap (approx. 120-150 USD) and includes a Quad core processor, 4GB ROM, 512MB RAM, 5M pixel camera and it's a dual SIM phone.

It may sound too good to be true to some of you.

These are my conclusions after using this phone for a few weeks...

Initial setup

It is very hard to remove the back cover, the cover doesn't disconnect very well from the area surrounding the earphone socket. In fact, you might want to use a pair of tweezers to help remove the cover. You might want to keep the tweezers handy if you want to remove your SIM card(s) or SD card, as everything fits in tightly.

Accessories

The only accessory, currently available is a screen guard. My phone came with a complimentary screen guard, however, it was stuck poorly to the outside of its package, resulting in a screen guard covered in dust which wouldn't attach to the phone without loads of bubbles and didn't stay on the phone for more than a day.

Dual SIM and mobile frequencies

The Dash 4.5 comes in a few versions including the D310a and the D310i. According to gsmarena.com the phone supports:

GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 for both SIMs

HSDPA (3G) 850 / 1900 for the D310a model

HSDPA (3G) 850 / 2100 for the D310i model.

Attempts to find out whether the 3G was for both SIMs or only one prior to purchase failed, I kept getting the gsmarena.com quote/link and no reply to further inqueries.

After a few weeks of owning this phone, I decided to borrow a second SIM and test this for myself and the result is that the second SIM can not connect via 3G, which limits you to connecting to providers that support 2G GSM for the 2nd SIM. Connection via 2G worked fine and via settings you can choose which SIM is used for default for calls, messages and data and the phone accepts calls from both SIMs.

Reception and call quality

The phone has a suprizingly good reception, I can pick up the carrier signal 3 floors underground (in parking lots), whereas my previous phone couldn't pick up the signal 1 floor underground. The call quality is good too, both during regular usage and via bluetooth.

Responsiveness

The phone reacts quickly, you can not feel the processor crawling during most uses (calls, emails, calendar, navigation, browsing).

Camera

The time to capture is slow, mainly due to the time it takes focus. The picture is pretty clear in both stills and video. There is an electronic stabilization mode for the video, however, I haven't played with that enough to comment on it.

Operating System

The phone comes with Android 4.2.1. The default browser is pretty bad, it goes mad if you try to switch Google account and it just doesn't come near the Firefox or Chrome for Android experience. Luckily you can download and install Firefox and Chrome. The system comes with various pre-installed apps such as a behind the scenes task manager, which has no UI, a battery thermal monitor (apparently BLU wants to make sure your phone doesn't blow up in your face) and a few others. Also the calendar it comes with isn't the same one Google published in the play store, however, it looks identical, other than the widget colors and the icon and you can download the Google app (and disable the old one, once you root the phone).

System-apps interaction

Unless you root your phone, using widgets to turn on your mobile data connection won't work (but they will be able to disable it), most apps seem to run smoothly, one by one, on the phone.

Memory and Multitasking

The phone officially comes with 512MB of RAM and 1GB ROM, however, task/files managers see 469MB of RAM and 0.98GB ROM (labelled internal storage) + another 1.8GB built in SD (labelled phone storage).


Available memory

Practially, there is only about 110-130MB of RAM available when you turn the phone on, this quickly drops to about 70MB of RAM. If you don't root your phone and remove a few system apps from the startup, you may end up with 60MB, 50MB or even only 40MB of RAM available, which means some apps won't run without crashing, when you load one app it will cause previous app to be killed, meaning you can't talk on the phone while navigating or use the keyboard while browsing!

Is the phone usable?

It can be, if you customize it a bit (by rooting it) and perhaps install a memory swapping app (which requires root) and a notification power control that will let you reset your phone now and then to clear up more memory.

How can you root your phone?

The only working reference I found for rooting this phone is this video in Spanish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgVCjyGPRTA

It contains a link to a site in Chineese, where, using Google translate for Chrome, I found this page: http://www.mgyun.com/vroot where there is a big blue button for downloading a rooting application (for Windows) which is in Chinese.

The Spanish instructions show you that you have to, as in all rooting procedures, enable USB debugging, then connect your phone to your computer and follow the steps in the video which are basically: click on buttons that probably say "Next" until you see it finishes a long process, then click on the other button (probably "Exit") because the default button will probably either repeat the process or unroot your phone.

You'll end up with a chinese admin app on your phone, however, the "yes" and "no" buttons for enabling root access to other apps are in English, so it is usable.

Summary

If you aren't a heavy app user and you don't mind rooting your phone and messing with the system defaults, then this phone can be a reasonable option for a great price. I would, however, recommend trying a model with higher specs (e.g. more memory) instead e.g. BLU Life Play.