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Will Fleksy replace your smartphone’s default keyboard?

I was tired of the old stock Android keyboard, so I gave Fleksy a shot. Will it replace my current keyboard? Probably not, but it’s still an amazing app.

Fleksy app

If you know me personally, then you know how much I hate texting. It’s not the actual act of texting or anything, I just don’t like the experience of typing on a smartphone. For example, if I get an important email that requires me to type a long reply, my first thought is how fast I can get to my Macbook Pro. Most of the time, I’ll wait until I get back to a computer to reply. The same goes with texting, too.

Luckily in this day and age, technology and apps have a solution for everything. For instance, tools like Mighty Text allow me to send SMS messages to friends through a computer. This eliminates me pulling out my phone to reply and also saves me an extra ten seconds, because let’s face it, time is precious and every second counts in this fast-paced world. If you haven’t tried it out, I recommend that you do.

So what do I do when I’m not around a computer? I bite the bullet and painstakingly type out my response. First world problems, I know.

So when I recently stumbled across Fleksy, a replacement for your default iOS and Android keyboard, it piqued my interest because, hey, anything is better than my current keyboard. So I tried it out, but one thing I quickly found was that there’s no saving me. There’s nothing anyone can do; I’m a lost cause.

Now before we go any further, Fleksy is an amazing upgrade over any default keyboard. It boasts features like the ability to send GIF’s, customizable themes, gestures, insanely accurate autocorrect and more. With features like this, it’s no wonder why people are rushing to downloading this app.

Here’s an overview of some of their notable features: 

Fleksy features Fleksy features Screen shot 2014-12-19 at 11. 31. 46 am

So usually when I check out an app or a product, I like to give myself a week with it. This way I can figure out all the ins and outs and offer a fair opinion. One thing I quickly found out was that this app wasn’t for me, and spending a week with it would drive me completely bonkers.

Here’s why……

Fleksy in itself was designed beautifully, and the user experience was great. Nothing about the app turned me off, it was just my personal preference when it came down to it.

I’m a swyper, meaning I like to type everything with one hand using Android’s swype feature. It allows me to type words using only one hand, and I found that it’s extremely fast. So naturally, I tried doing it on Fleksy, and immediately realized they didn’t support this. As you can imagine, panic ensued.

A company spokesman provided me with this answer in a conversation regarding the absence of a Swype feature:

True, we don’t have a swype feature, which is actually by design. We instead use swiping for other functionality like deleting, adding punctuation, and scrolling word suggestions.  We feel like tapping is the metaphor 99% of people are used to when using a keyboard, and we didn’t want to force users to learn a new input metaphor to use our keyboard.  We understand that swyping can make one-handed typing easier, but we’re trying to solve that in other ways like our One-Handed Typing Extension on iOS.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to let the lack of a swype feature turn me off from it, so I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. I soon realized that I relied heavily on Android’s swype feature, and that it was something I couldn’t live without. It’s a shame, because Fleksy is a really great app. In the end, it just wasn’t for me.

The folks over at Flesky further added, “I think if I were talking to people who are heavy swipers, I’d remind them that there was a learning curve in switching to swiping in the first place.  Their typing metaphor has changed, so it’s to be expected that re-learning a new metaphor is going to take a little time.  Sticking with it though results in a much richer experience with Fleksy because of our customizability.  Our correction tech is world-class, but you also get the added benefits provided by our Extensions. We iterate and update faster and harder than anyone, so we’re going to continue adding great, useful features which improve both the typing experience, and experiences beyond typing.”

Fleksy is available for iOS and Android. Download them here: https://fleksy.com/

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Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.

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