TouchPal

TouchPal is an alternative input method for mobile devices, designed and developed by Shanghai-based CooTek. It is a software application running on multiple platforms, including Android, iOS (no longer supported, only maintained), Windows Mobile, and Windows 8.[1] It stimulates a keyboard on the screen of the device, which is used to enter text by tapping on the screen or sliding a finger between letters constructing the word. It is an optional text input method to the traditional physical keyboards and default keyboards provided by the device manufacturer.

Technology

TouchPal default keyboard layout is designed based on the "T+" technology that combines two letters and one symbol on each key, whose layout looks like a T. The overall layout of all the letters follows a common computer keyboard layout, which is the QWERTY layout.

It has a word predicting technology which predicts the most probable word or its spelling.

Awards

In 2009, CooTek won the award of Mobile Innovation at the GSMA Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona. This competition rewards the most valued and relevant applications, devices, services and technologies. It is attended by experimented judges such as journalists, analysts and academics.

Apart from that, CooTek reached the Final-stage of the Battlefield of TechCrunch Disrupt in 2012 in Beijing. This startup battlefield rewards the most innovative new product among 30 shortlisted companies with the help of expert judges.

Finally, CooTek's TouchPal application was featured on the main page of Google Play Store in January and February 2012.

Innovations

Among its features, TouchPal X has included some innovations:

  • TouchPal Wave – Using gestures to input commonly used phrases or sentences
  • TouchPal Curve® – Word gesture technology
  • Sliding up or down to input number or symbol
  • Emoji X: Flip up Space bar for emoji & smileys
  • Contextual prediction
  • Walkie-Talkie style voice input (Push-to-talk)
  • T+ dual-letter layout: bigger keys than QWERTY
  • Toolbar plugins (Twitter plugin)
  • Mixed language prediction
  • Keyboard meter and speed statistics tracker
  • Multiple themes available
  • One-hand keyboard layout for large touchscreens

Supported languages on Android (just 16 languages on iOS)

TouchPal provides mixed language prediction and support more than 100 languages, under which:

  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Arabic
  • Armenian
  • Assamese
  • Azeri
  • Basque
  • Bengali
  • Bopomofo
  • Bosnian (Cyrillic)
  • Bosnian (Latin)
  • Bulgarian
  • Burmese
  • Burmese (Zawgyi)
  • Cangjie
  • Catalan
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Dutch (Belgium)
  • English
  • English (US)
  • Estonian
  • Finnish
  • French
  • French (Belgium)
  • French (Canada)
  • French (Switzerland)
  • Galician
  • German
  • German (Switzerland)
  • Greek
  • Gujarati
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hinglish
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Italian (Switzerland)
  • Japanese
  • Kannada
  • Kazakh (Cyrillic)
  • Khmer
  • Kiswahili
  • Korean
  • Laos
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Macedonian
  • Malagasy
  • Malaysian
  • Marathi
  • Nepali
  • Nepali (Traditional)
  • Norwegian (Bokmål)
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian (Cyrillic)
  • Serbian (Latin)
  • Simple Cangjie
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Spanish (Latin America)
  • Spanish (US)
  • Swedish
  • Tagalog
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Thai
  • Tibetan
  • Turkish
  • Uighur
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese
  • Vietnamese (Telex)
  • isiZulu

OEM clients

Facts about TouchPal's OEM clients:

  • More than 45 manufacturers/ODMs/OEMs have selected TouchPal Keyboard
  • 18% Android phones are shipped with TouchPal Keyboard as default keyboard
  • TouchPal has reached more than 50 million global shipments already

Besides, TouchPal is the default keyboard of Vodafone and Orange ODM devices since 2009. It has also been selected as Mobile Internet Application of China Telecom in 2012. Finally, TouchPal Keyboard is the default keyboard on many manufacturers’ devices including:

History

TouchPal v1

TouchPal v1 was released in October 2007. It only provides the T+ layout virtual keyboard with one-layer design. There aren’t any additional function keys such as Shift or Ctrl because the functions they achieve are built-in and can be easily implemented by finger tapping or sliding. It has many useful features such as self-defined sentences (My Sentences), My Commands, drag & drop buttons and comprehensive content editing functions. It only supports English input.

TouchPal v2

TouchPal v2 comes out in late December 2007. Apart from what the v1 has to offer, its virtual keyboard is resizable by finger sliding. It also includes customizable emoticons and a few other features. It also supports several European languages input such as English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.

TouchPal v3

TouchPal v3 English version is released in April 2008, together with extra European input languages. TouchPal v3 Chinese input version comes out one month later.

Compared with the previous two versions, TouchPal v3 has a lot of new features. It supports three layouts on one virtual keyboard: the T+ layout, the full QWERTY layout, and the 9-key PhonePad layout. Users can switch keyboard layouts by finger sweeping. There is also an animation effect when turning the pages or switching the layouts. TouchPal v3 significantly improves the predictive algorithm by incorporating its patent pending context-based word prediction and mistyping auto-correction algorithm. Besides, it is much more extensible than the previous two versions. With its SDK, users can self develop the supported input languages, the skins, and change the keyboard layout. It also provides changeable keypress sounds.

TouchPal v4 & v5

In November 2008, CooTek starts to release TouchPal for Android devices with its initial version (v4) mainly shipped for manufacturer. Five months later, in April 2009, CooTek launches the official public release of TouchPal v4.2.

Almost two years later, in June 2011, TouchPal Curve v4.7.6 is unveiled.

In September 2011, CooTek launches Touchpal v5.0 with milestone upgrading.

TouchPal X

In September 2013, Touchpal X v 5.4.5 comes out with various added features such as TouchPal Wave, TouchPal Curve®, Symbol and Number quick input, Emoji X, Contextual prediction and Walkie-Talkie style voice input.

Other products (SwiftCall)

In addition to TouchPal keyboard, CooTek developed SwiftCall which is a powerful smart dialer/contacts application replacing users’ stock dialer. It provides the ability to search contacts on dial pad, set users’ availability, block calls and integrate Facebook & Twitter into the contact list.

The latest features are the following:

  • Gesture dialing : drawing a gesture to call frequent contacts rapidly
  • Fast contact search:
    • Typing directly contact names on dial pad. Type "MG", "Miy" or "Guz" for "Miyase Guzel"
    • Typing "1234" for any phone number consisting of "1234". (e.g., "415-888-1234", "415-123-4888")
    • Search contacts by their company names, email, address or notes.
  • Number attribution: Showing the registered location of phone number
    • Group Contacts
    • Group management including create, mod, del
  • Batching SMS or email by one-key press
  • Blacklist: Creating a black/white list
  • Auto updating contacts: When someone's Pals update their profile, it will be automatically updated.

This app requires locating permission to provide advanced yellow page search in some countries. CooTek will extend this feature to more countries in the future. TouchPal won't read users’ locations if their country is not supported at all.

References

  1. ↑ "Touchpal Brings Swipe-to-Type and Predictive Text to Windows 8 Tablets"
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.