Get The Gesture Filled Swype On Any Android Phone!

Of the many features Android has, having the option to switch keyboards is definitely one of the best! This is probably because the built in Android keyboard is awful… For those of you who don’t know, Swype is a keyboard that takes a completely different approach to typing on a touch surface, think of Palm’s graffiti mixed with a standard touch keyboard.

Now for me personally I type MUCH faster on a standard touch keyboard than on Swype, however this is only the case if I’m typing with both hands, if I’m one-handed typing then Swype is the way to go! Now this version of Swype is the first to have a huge noticeable update, they added gestures to save us time, for example now using gestures on the keyboard we can tweet, cut/paste, select text, etc (you can see some of the major gestures in the video).

Honestly doing some of those simple tasks on Android phones, tends to be fairly tedious so that’s a definite plus. Unfortunately though, getting this app update is a bit of a problem right now, it actually launched on the Nexus S 4G on Sprint, so everyone else would probably have to wait for a release… but this is GoGeeks, we know you don’t want to wait! If you have a rooted phone, than just follow these instructions:

1. Download the .zip file from the XDA-Developers forum (link) and extract it anywhere.
2. In root explorer, copy “Swype.apk” from the extracted files to “/system/app/”.
3. Long press on “Swype.apk” and select “Permissions”.  Change the permissions to Read and Write for the Owner, and Read only for both Group and Other.
4. From the extracted files, now copy “libswypecore.3.25.91.30637.so” to “/system/lib”.
5. Long press on “libswypecore.3.25.91.30637.so” and select “Permissions”. Change the permissions to Read and Write for the Owner and Read only for both Group and Other.
6. Exit Root Explorer and open Terminal Emulator, inside there, run the following commands one by one: “su” –> “sync” –> “reboot” .
7. Reboot your phone and you should be good to go!

UPDATE: Swype apparently contacted the poster on XDA, so the link was removed, however the beta option below is still a way for your to try out the new Swype!

For those of you who don’t have rooted phones, you can get this early by signing up for the beta over at the swype website (click me).

If you haven’t already, feel free to check out our review on Swype (if necessary, after the update we might re-review the app).