I still feel the pinnacle was ~2011 Windows Phone. It was some kind of swipe-to-type, but maybe not Swype specifically? At any rate, it seemed to use "how humans actually talk" as a guideline, because it was do a great job of predicting what words I would actually mean to use in a row.
Modern keyboards are like, I know you just said "I want" but instead of predicting "to" I predict "rip". I mean the letters are close. And "I want rip" makes way more sense than "I want to." You're welcome!
Apple keyboard is shit. Swype (the one Microsoft bought) is better but still shit. Gboard is ok. But none of them are close to that windows phone keyboard. I still miss it.
And i used to be able to backspace the wrong word and fix it and it would learn thats what I meant. Now if I try that, it'll frequently keep trying to edit to the word I didn't mean unless I press the little checkmark in the autocorrect panel. Just annoying UX.
The fact that Apple will as often as not autocorrect grammar from actually-correct to wrong -- and systematically screw up spelling -- in not just transcribed Siri but also in typing is just inexcusable at this point. It will even Randomly capitalize Certain words!
Suggests words that make no sense, preferring rare words to much more widely used and obvious matching picks. Has the vocabulary of a poorly educated five year old idiot savant — fails to complete many words you use fifty times a day, but sometimes surprises you by suggesting something you'd hear a couple times per decade. Doesn't know other forms of the same word, forcing you to correct it manually over and over again, often failing to remember the word until you type it in four or five times.
Yes, I've downloaded all the dictionaries, tried it on many phones, and my friends are of the same opinion: it really is just bad.
Even switching to the Hacker's Keyboard and tweaking some settings still has me smacking the "tab" key or whatever when hitting space.
Just out of curiosity, who here is a one-handed texter, like me? I just assumed my constant need for error correction was because I only use one hand (and thus, one thumb) to type, but this thread has me wondering.
This is a patent case where IA made a function worse instead of better, yet companies clinged to it for some reason.
Troll answer: A-Z label maker keyboard
The swiping keyboard from Apple simply refuses to do "and" for me. I get "abs" (I'm not a gym rat; I don't talk about that) or "Abbas" (the only one I know is the Palestinian president, and I don't talk about him either) almost every time. I hate the autocorrect-something-five-words-back problem, but not being able to recognize one of the most common words in the language is unacceptable crap.
I'll give Swiftkey another try.
I'd be giving the keyboard a try!