LAS VEGAS—Nuance today released FlexT9, a do-everything input app for Android cell phones which combines Dragon Dictation voice input, Swype-like swiping, a standard keyboard and a handwriting recognizer.
"You can do tapping, tracing, handwriting and speaking all from the same keypad," Nuance VP of product management Matt Revis said.
The keyboards are certainly well-integrated. I installed the app easily and found that the standard keyboard seemed to be more accurate and forgiving than the standard Android keyboard or Swype's. The T9 Trace swiping method is built into the keyboard. Buttons at the bottom of the virtual keypad let you quickly switch to the very accurate handwriting recognizer and to Dragon Dictation mode. Dragon Dictation was definitely more accurate than Google's voice search, though like Google's system it's reliant on having a good Internet connection to process voice data.
The one weak spot for me was the T9 Trace functionality, which I found less accurate than Swype after using T9 Trace for several days. For instance, "I've been using the software on a regular basis" at one point came out as "I've been using the sportswear on a regularity barred." But I'm a major Swype user, and Revis said T9 Trace and Swype have slightly different motions involved—T9 Trace swipes should be more angular, Swype swipes more rounded. T9 Trace also predicts some words based on their context, he said.
"Some people, out of the box, may have better success with one or the other," Revis said. The great strength of FlexT9 is that it integrates multiple input methods, he added.
Android phone owners can already do some voice input through Google Voice Actions, and Swype is a free beta for all Android phones (at least for the moment.) Nuance adds in the handwriting recognizer and says FlexT9 offers better accuracy than competing products.
Parts of Nuance's system will start appearing for free on various phones next year. T9 Trace will appear on "several US handsets" with "several carriers" in 2011, Revis said. Dragon Dictation is already on the T-Mobile myTouch 4G. Putting the app in the Android Market just makes Nuance's various keyboards available to more people.
There are a few features which aren't there yet, Revis pointed out. You can't activate dictation from a Bluetooth headset, though you can speak into a headset once dictation has started. The dictation system also doesn't automatically include the proper names in your address book. Nuance is working on both features, Revis said.
FlexT9 costs $4.99 and will be available today in the Android Market. It works with all phones running Android 2.0 or above.