Jellybean’s upgraded keyboard - is it available for ICS?

Android 4.1 nicknamed Jelly Bean is the latest version of the popular mobile operating system. It was
announced with great fanfare at the recently concluded Google I/O 2012 conference in San Francisco.
The OS was showcased on the Nexus 7 mini tablet and garnered rave reviews. One of the features that
didn’t receive too much during the conference is the addition of an upgraded keyboard for the device.
At first glance, the new keyboard seems very similar to the one available on Ice Cream Sandwich. The
difference becomes apparent only when you start typing. Google has included a predictive algorithm for
the English language in its factory keyboard itself. It makes typing a breeze. It has an built-in mechanism
that suggests phrases that you commonly use while typing. What is impressive is that the algorithm is
capable of “learning” your patterns and thus makes typing easier. In a string of words, the centre word
option can be toggled by a long press to replace the word with one that you prefer using a multi word
matrix.

If you are interested in using this functionality on your Ice Cream Sandwich phone, do not despair. There
are a number of ways you can do so. Install the Swype app from the Google Play store to use a keyboard
that offers the similar functionality as Jelly Bean. SwiftKey is an even better app that serves the same
purpose. Industry watchers have commented about Google finally catching up and introducing this
feature as a built-in component rather than having to install a third party app.

If you want to have the exact same Jelly Bean keyboard without having to upgrade, there’s a fix for
that too. Beansoft has introduced an app called Thumb Keyboard. Currently in the alpha version, this
app installs the Jelly Bean keyboard in any device running Android 4.0.3 or higher. Unfortunately,
the user dictionary does not work in this app. Any attempt to add a user word will result in the app
shutting down. The languages that this app supports are English, Russian, German, French, Spanish and
Portuguese. Auto correction of missing spaces is feature that is available only when you use English as
the keyboard’s language. The code for this app was taken from AOSP.

In short, install Swype or Swiftkey to experience the convenience of an intelligent keyboard. Waiting till
an upgrade rolls out for your Android phone making it compatible to Jelly Bean may be a better option
than installing Thumb Keyboard.