So Android 4.2 is out and I’m delighted to have it loaded up on my Nexus 7. There are some nice new features such as multiple accounts (a real boon for tablets shared at home), new camera features, lock screen widgets, and quick settings access in the notification area.
Beyond that there is also a new keyboard which comes with Swype style gesture typing.
I have been a user of SwiftKey for quite some time now but it’s not really ideal for tablet typing as one finger typing is frequently required. This is even more noticeable when I’ve got a stylus in my hand.
This is where gesture typing comes into its own and I could see it being very useful for any long form typing on the tablet. As an experiment I’m testing out typing this blog post using the gesture typing feature. Overall Google have done a very good job and it’s quite forgiving of misdirected gestures. Of course it’s not as fast add a physical keyboard, but it definitely works well.
I’ll still check out the upcoming SwiftKey Flow beta which is going to offer their own take on gesture typing, but fair play to Google for a very solid stock effort.
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