This was back when I had a smartphone, 2 years agoThat explains it.
They’ve pretty much reached feature parity (overall), but I’ve found that SwiftKey has surpassed Swype in speed because of code bloat (although Swype devs are aware of this issue and working on it) among some other advantages.
It’s easy to get locked into one technology or another over time especially when it comes to things like this because it can take time for the final evaluation to properly manifest itself - and, to complicate things, it’s often evolving.
Kind of like Launchers on the Mac. Some people swear by Alfred because they only used LaunchBar for a couple of hours several years ago in comparison and vice versa. And, of course, everyone has their own idiosyncratic usages of the tools as well that makes one tool work for better for them than the other, perhaps. For this reason, I actually use both Alfred and LaunchBar at the same time (which I know is highly unusual, but works for me).
Overall, I’m just glad that both Swype and SwiftKey exist to compete with each other and push each other to excel.
EDIT/UPDATE:
I just updated and re-enabled Swype to test it.
It still doesn’t show a live preview of the words as you swipe them like SwiftKey does. Swype only shows you the text after you’ve completed swiping. That continuing situation unfortunately makes Swype pretty lame unfortunately and I’m sticking with SwiftKey.
SwiftKey has much better options for keyboard layouts… i.e., the lack of handy left and right arrow keys (next to each other) is driving me nuts in Swype and I still don’t see that option to enable them. I mean, I can see arrow keys if I do a gesture first for the number keyboard, but that’s extra steps I don’t want in order to simply move the cursor left and right.
Swype still has its advantages though and if they can tackle the critical live preview option and have better options for keyboard layouts (with left/right arrow keys, for example) I’d definitely look into switching back to it someday. But as of today, SwiftKey has got it beat and is lightyears ahead when it comes to a predictive live preview (that way you can swipe tremendously faster because you’ll see the word you want pop up and stop swiping when you see it and start the next swipe).
On a positive note, the Swype update has made it much faster than it was after it got bloated. As far as why I’d switch back to Swype if they took care of those critical issues I mentioned above is mainly because Swype has far superior gesture implementation.
Swype superior gestures: http://www.swype.com/tips/advanced-tips/
SwiftKey janky gestures: http://support.swiftkey.net/knowledgebase/articles/163468-what-gestures-can-i-use-with-swiftkey-
