Swype everything: the development of the popular keyboard is discontinued

Nuance decided to bury Swype - one of the first keyboards that allows you to quickly and without errors type text on the screen of your smartphone using strokes. The developer company no longer plans to release updates or new versions of the application.

How it was

The first smartphone in which Swype was used was the 2009 flagship Samsung Omnia II i8000. In the same year, developers released a beta version of the keyboard for Android. In 2011, the team bought the company Nuance, which later built into the application of its Dragon dictation system. Swype was preinstalled on some smartphones Samsung, LG, HTC and Motorola, and in 2013 it became available for download on Google Play. By the time the store appeared strong competitors in the face of TouchPal and SwiftKey, and Google launched its keyboard with gesture support (now Gboard).

And now what?

Swype Keyboard is still displayed on Google Play , and from the App Store it disappeared in early February, although the keyboard can still be installed from the shopping list. Cloud synchronization of dictionaries and voice input will work for the time being, unless the next update of the operating system breaks the application. For a long time, Swype worked on Huawei smartphones, but in the models of 2017 SwiftKey and Gboard were already installed.

Active audience Swype is difficult to estimate - the phrase "over 250 million users" in the description of the Android version has not changed since 2013. Meanwhile, Nuance decided to focus on business customers. The company's dictation system with speech recognition is used in cars and medical institutions.

Updated : the Nuance support team reported that while no features will not be disabled.

Source: XDA Developers