With the advent of the ability to replace the standard keyboard in iOS, the developers began to tinker with their counterparts who is in that much. Of course, each user has a vision of ease of use that often does not coincide with the desires of users. The people waited for simplicity and quick text input, but received animated gif memes with jokes. They, of course, are also interesting, but not so useful in business correspondence. The more interesting is the newly appeared keyboard TouchPal, which was made not for entertainment, but for the convenience of typing.
The first thing I want to note is the support for Russian text input. At the moment, TouchPal is one of the few third-party keyboards that support the Russian language. And this is a big plus, although the application itself is completely (and only) in English.
Of some interesting things, you can note the change of skins for keyboards, which number as many as 15 pieces, plus one standard. All of them, of course, do not differ much from each other, but to someone so useful.
Now about the most important thing – the work of the application. You can enter text in two ways: standard, as before, by pressing the virtual buttons, and with svaypami, exactly the same as it is done in Swype – the most popular keyboard, which on iOS has not received the support of the Russian language. Both ways are convenient, the main thing in this business is habit.
Switching languages occurs as on most different keyboards on Android: you need to navigate from left to right (or vice versa) by pressing the Space button. I will not say that this is the most elegant solution, but after many years of switching languages on the button – you just need to get used to it. And for those who are already difficult to use the iPhone 6 (and even more so 6 Plus) with one hand, when there is not enough finger length to switch the layout to symbols, there is an easy solution: all the basic punctuation marks that are used in the language are rendered on a row of buttons with letters. So, if you want to put a comma in the sentence, just press and hold the soft-key button for a bit until the additional characters for that button appear. Or, as an alternative: click on the “soft sign” and not letting go with your finger down – both these actions instead of the letter will substitute a punctuation mark in the text.
About the same work and writing numbers, which are located in the top row of the virtual keyboard. But with a slight difference: you can enter a digit only by holding the corresponding letter. Quite convenient.
However, the most interesting keyboard bonus is found when you start typing in your native language. No one is surprised at the predictive input to the standard iOS keyboard, but it does not support the Russian language. But TouchPal supports. Of course, not as good as the standard keyboard from Apple does, but nevertheless it is able to select words, and it is quite tolerable. Unfortunately, there is no information on the learningability of the keyboard, but it would not be bad to know whether it will improve itself as it works.
Finally it is worthwhile to tell about two spoons of tar in this barrel of honey. One of them is the lack of dictation. In this keyboard there is simply no icon with a microphone, which allows you to dictate the text. It’s really insulting, especially when I’m already used to using this opportunity. And the second – the application is not quite perfect. I have not yet encountered, but in the reviews in the App Store I’m assured that sometimes the keyboard does not appear in Spotlight. To activate it, you need to go back into the settings, remove and re-set full access to the system of this keyboard.
In general, TouchPal – it’s about what we were waiting for (I’m sure for sure). There is a predictive input, there is an input by means of svaypov and there is a quick access to figures and punctuation. And most importantly – in Russian. I would emphasize that the main thing is that it’s free, but for such a product it would not be pitiful to give a couple of dollars.
And what do you use? Left the standard keyboard or replaced with something else? Write your comments below!
