When it comes to the iPhone 6 and iOS 7 redesign, most people seem to be on the same page: Apple needs to make some serious changes in order to get people excited again. Certainly, compared to the feature-rich Samsung Galaxy S4, my iPhone 5 seems almost barren in comparison.
After all, the Galaxy S4 doesn't just come equipped with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and all that Google's operating system offers. It also comes packing a bucket load of new apps and features built specifically by Samsung. Some of them are redundant considering Google's options come built-in (two Internet browsers?) and some of them aren't quite as cool as advertised (anything related to eye-tracking), but it's clear Samsung threw everything they had into the smartphone.
There's also one feature that really needs to be in the iPhone 6 (or 5S, or whatever it's called). Something that, after spending a few days using on the Galaxy S4, I'm actually pretty sad to lose as I move back to the iPhone 5. It's the Swype-like keyboard, and it's not even a Galaxy S4 exclusive (though it is built-in from the get-go)!
With many of the Galaxy S4's features, specifically its Air Gesture and eye-tracking tech, there's this moment when, before you test them out, you're not quite sure they're actually going to work. You tilt your head down as you're reading an online article and, suddenly, the page starts scrolling! And you're not touching the screen at all! It feels like magic, but then the page scrolls down some more. And it keeps scrolling. And then you're just annoyed because you can't get the page to scroll up again and you hate this stupid feature because it's so dumb and stupid.
The Swype-style keyboard, though, is nothing like that. It's just magic. I wasn't sure I could be converted, but the moment you glide your thumb back and forth across the screen in a seemingly haphazard fashion and an actual, honest-to-goodness English word is created, you're sold. From seemingly random chaos comes rational, organized language. It's like the secrets of the universe distilled into keyboard form, man.
Or something like that. Either way, I loved typing, taking notes, and sending messages on the Galaxy S4 with these features enabled. It's true, the keyboard doesn't always get things right. But the more you use it, the more it records your tendencies, and the better it gets at predicting what you're going to type.
This needs to be in the next Apple device, whether it's the iPhone 6 or iPhone 5S. Luckily, Apple seems to recognize that its interface is getting stale, and along with an iOS 7 redesign, it's been in contact with Swype about its keyboard tech. Hopefully it'll make an appearance at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
There's been a lot of talk lately about how Google Glass isn't going to take off because it doesn't make your life significantly easier, but sometimes you don't need revolutionary new hardware to do accomplish that. Sometimes it's the little things that do it.
