This is a guest post by Dana Harrison. Check up on his other activities at The Linux Experiment and his other posts on audiophonik.

Hi, all!  You may have noticed already by reading my slightly different name, or perhaps you’ve heard of me over on the wildly popular site I co-founded, The Linux Experiment, but I am not the usual Phil.  My name is Dana, and I’m a young professional working in IT for a large insurance company.  I work with Phil and also had the pleasure of founding The Linux Experiment with him.  This is my second guest post for audiophonik.

This time around, Phil has asked me to do another review for an application available on Google’s Android platform.  This time, it surrounds my new (I use that phrase loosely) HTC Magic+ phone on Rogers, sporting Android 1.5 because HTC and Rogers are too damn lazy to have updated me yet to Android 2.1.

Swype: An Introduction

Swype is a multi-platform, and rather kick-ass, replacement to the usual hum-drum keyboards offered with today’s touch-screen smartphones and other devices.  It offers gesture-based text entry for all of the usual applications included with these devices, like e-mail, messaging, and web-browsing.  Here’s a nifty screenshot:

The idea behind Swype is simple: instead of individual key presses on a QWERTY or T9-based keypad, the user simply slides their finger around on the screen, covering the keys for each word they want to type.  The sequence above could correspond to “or” or “our” – in this situation, both options would show up on a prompt.  To better simulate “or”, you could slide your finger up and around the other buttons, stopping at “r”.

Sounds awesome – how about in practice?

While it takes a bit of getting used to, Swype works beautifully in real-world applications.  It’s intuitive, quick, and incredibly accurate – more than once have I randomly scribbled my thumb over a few different keys, and nine times out of ten it gets the exact word I was thinking of.  Getting used to single-thumbing a full QWERTY setup can be challenging, after only two days of full Swype use I’m sure that I’ve improved over my previous typing speed.

The only real ‘issue’ I’ve encountered is actually with my phone itself.  I’ve found that having a second-generation Android device can… lag, at times.  Word choice can take up to a few seconds to show up, depending on how badly I’ve butchered the key gestures.  On the upside, I can continue typing along, hoping the whole time that the proper words are going to come up (before they all do at once).  The screen on the HTC Magic can also get a little… moist at times, which will sometimes cause sliding motions to skip over the screen, missing letters.  Maybe I’m just a sweaty bastard, I don’t know.

The Verdict

Swype is a fantastic, easy-to-use, and super-fast alternative to the standard keyboard of any touch-screen device.  While the public beta is closed for now, I’m sure it’ll either be up again shortly or pop up on the Market for several mobile devices in no time.  I suggest you get it as soon as you can.

Screen captures to follow – video, if I can manage it – as soon as I figure out how the hell to get it to work on Windows.

This is a guest post by Dana Harrison. Check up on his other activities at The Linux Experiment and his other posts on audiophonik.

Hi, all!  You may have noticed all ready by reading my slightly different name, or perhaps you’ve heard of me over on the wildly popular site I co-founded, The Linux Experiment, but I am not the usual Phil.  My name is Dana, and I’m a young professional working in IT for a large insurance company.  I work with Phil and also had the pleasure of founding The Linux Experiment with him.

For reasons unbeknown to me, Phil asked me a few months ago to install Slide Screen for Android onto my Rogers HTC Dream – that’s a ‘T-Mobile G1′ for any American readers out there.  Slide Screen is basically a complete home screen replacement for the standard Android interface, and is meant to reduce screen clutter and information overload in a nicely presented, simple, single location.

Installation and Setup

This was just about the simplest thing in the world, as is the installation of most standard Android applications.  Open up the Android Market, search for Slide Screen, and install.

Setup was also quite simple, offering the option of either completely replacing my home screen (which I chose) or running as a launchable application.

First Impressions

I have to hand it to the folks at Larva Labs – they know how to code a nice-looking interface.  The Slide Screen interface is certainly clean if nothing else, but while preventing me from experiencing information overload, I feel I may have been left out of information altogether.

Among other frustrations, I found the Slide Screen application significantly slowed down the all ready slow ROM included on the Rogers HTC Dream.  In addition, the constantly running application reduced battery life noticeably.

The notification widget for missed calls also, inexplicably, did not actually bring me to my call log(s) as expected, but instead populated the number in my phone application for quick dialing.

I also found the ‘simplification’ of information rather strange.  Instead of keeping the information I want in plain view, I found that the application held information I want in inconvenient (ie, having to launch it myself) places.

Final Thoughs

While I can see the merit in this application, it’s not specifically for me.  If the folks at Larva Labs can find a way to integrate more popular applications into the main screen while reducing overall memory footprint, I may explore it again in the future.

For now, I am falling in love with the Sense interface of my HTC Magic!