Another keyboard that requires network connectivity, profile/contact data, call state, access to photos/recordings (eh?) and even wants to send SMS[1]. Do users really don't care and blindly ignore all security warnings?

Just wondering why keyboard makers don't provide "restricted" builds of their software, that intentionally lack some features, but still serve their purpose by providing an efficient method to type at a reasonable price.

___

[1] EDIT: Not sure, this could be localization error in a Play Store. Reportedly it says "read your text messages" in English, but for me what I see roughly translates to "send SMS and MMS".

I guess this is part of the continued move away from paid apps - but as a user, I found this confusing.

Swiftkey states that their goal is to get as many people using the app as possible, so they're making it free - but nowhere do they define for their users how they are planning on making money.

That leaves me thinking the one of the following: you'll be selling my data, you'll be doing in-app purchasing, you've found some other magical revenue source, or you'll be going out of business. I don't want to spread FUD here - my point is that as a paying customer this is not a good way to communicate. I have no idea what the strategy is - but if you want me to remain a customer, I personally would like to understand what is going on.

I have tried many different Android keyboards: Old and new stock ones, swype, ultimate, tons of non-qwerty ones; but I always end up coming back to Swift. It's just the only one that is Precise and Aggressive enough to support really fast typing.

Good luck to them now, on iPhone!

They are essentially a keylogger when the 'cloud' service is turned on. It uploads everything you type but tries to detect password fields and avoid them. They insist their security and cryptography is quality, but we've heard that a lot recently.

Their lack of an obvious business model is a bit worrying.

The new themes are quite nice, and it is a nice touch to give a free 'premium' theme pack to users who paid in the past.

They added in-app-purchases instead, though doesn't affect the keyboard more then superficially (themes).

So how will they make money now? By selling people's data?

I bet they are aiming the iPhone market.

Makes sense when you consider Swiftkey user base on android and how some iPhone users can become jealous of such a nice keyboard.

As Apple opened the iPhone to this market, the strongest brand on Android may have a easier start.

I found SwiftKey's performance to deteriorate markedly after a few months of use. After that I switched to Kii, which was fine. But now after jumping around I am back to stock, which I actually enjoy a lot more than I did the other two. Google's keyboard feels much more responsive to me and I don't feel like it handles swipe recognition pretty well. It's not as great at prediction but I found using that feature to slow me down anyway. Only feature I really miss is deleting an entire word by swiping space-backspace

I can now give my data away for free instead of paying. Woo hoo. :)

Thank you for posting the link to the play store. The verge article I read earlier had no link which is very frustrating when reading something like his on a mobile device.

Isn't the same thing already available on stock Android? I don't use it because I find it pretty inconvenient, but every time I swipe on the keys it appears.

I just wish I could remove their branded button from keyboard.

Just installed, times better than the stock one at predicting what I'm typing, larger keys, much better overall experience.

They seem to give you the 'premium' pack, even if you were only a trial user.

I cant understand whySwiftkey still cant learn from WhatsApp. They had such a big advantage in the mobile keyboard market and are going to loose it because of missing new communication channels...

I wish they had a semi-transparent theme.

Desperation as Fleksy slowly begins to destroy them