New Swype Beta Features Dragon Dictation

Just two months after Swype was acquired by Nuance Communications, the text input provider launched a new beta version that features Nuance’s Dragon Dictation and other capabilities.

The beta is open to all Android devices that do not already have Swype pre-installed by the phone manufacturers and carriers. Additionally, users must be able to install third-party applications from non-market sources. “Sorry AT&T users!” Swype said in its announcement.

Other new features include improved advanced language modeling and automatic updates. Users can speak commands and punctuation using Dragon Dictation.

The current version of Swype with Dragon Dictation supports United States, United Kingdom, and Australian English; European and Canadian French; Italian; German; and Spanish. This list will be expanded early next year. If a user’s language is not currently supported, Dragon Dictation will default to U.S. English regardless of their current keyboard layouts.

Swype cautioned users that the beta is not a fully functional version. Specifically, it only includes the languages mentioned above and might include untested code that could result in bugs. The company said it has found that to truly integrate a soft keyboard on a phone, it needs to be pre-loaded, and users might experience some “aberrant” behavior.

If a user’s phone came with Swype pre-installed, the beta won't work. The beta software supports devices with HVGA (480x320), WVGA (800x480), WVGA854 (854x480), QVGA (320x240), WSVGA (1024x600), SVGA (800x600), HD720 (1280x720), WXGA (1280x800), and qHD (960x540) screen sizes.

Nuance acquired Swype in October for $102.5 million.