In the past couple days, the popular keyboard app Fleksy has decided to go free in order to increase their userbase. It's my personal keyboard of choice, and I have been using it without complaint for the past six months, but what actually is Fleksy?
One of the greatest things about the Android OS as a whole is that you have options. The user is not tethered to the same calendar, photos, camera, or even Twitter app anymore. You have the option to switch at any time. Keyboards are no different. Now I started with the stock keyboard on my Samsung Galaxy S III and then went on to the stock keyboard Cyanogenmod offered in their CM 10 and CM 11 versions of the ROM. After that I switched to Swype, Google Keyboard and eventually Fleksy. I've tested SwiftKey, Minuum, and touch pal. Nothing comes close to the usability I get with the Fleksy keyboard.
I initially selected Fleksy because it was the only keyboard to let me have my enter button back on the bottom right as opposed to the silly emoji icon that I never use. As I user it more, I found that Fleksy offers what other keyboard don't offer and that's gesture typing. The term gesture typing in this case is not to be confused with Swype where the user drags their finger from letter to letter to create words. In this case, it is swiping to the left to delete, and swiping up and down to go through the autocorrect options. Although it takes a little getting used to, you will find that your words per minute, WPM, will greatly improve.
What I liked about Fleksy the most from the get go was that the letters were large. I know there are some users that want their keyboards to take up as little space as possible, but I like the larger keys because it helps reduce error for me. Error is then terrified even further with the fantastic autocorrect that Fleksy offers. I have not the slightest clue how it is nearly as accurate as it is, definitely has something to do with intense algorithims, but I enjoy it thoroughly. I find that although I miss swyping, I type faster with Fleksy. The gestures are intuitive and easy to pick up. If you swipe up on a word, you can automatically add it to the dictionary.
Fleksy offers themes for the user, but I was never really into it so never delved into it besides picking the black keyboard theme. It may be a tad gimmicky, but Fleksy also has badges. They are simply for aesthetic purposes to show progress in areas such as auto correct, typing with the invisible keyboard and so on. Nothing that really breaks ground, but a nice touch
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My favorite feature of Fleksy is definitely the extensions. These extensions add extra, free features to Fleksy. Again, most of these are gimmicks, but they do prove to be useful. For example, the one extension I have on let's me swipe on my keyboard to add a number row. This makes my life easier when typing in numbers because now I don't have to click an extra button to get to the numbers. Another extension lets me add certain apps as hot keys so that I an quickly jump to them. I have my email, texting, app store, and writing app all hot keyed so that I can quickly get to them when needed.
Fleksy is simple at its heart. There are no external ads that plague the app and it is quite easy to use. It is definitely different with its gesture typing, but once you get used to it, your overall speed in typing goes up dramatically.
Here is a gif of me typing on the keyboard and using some of the functions that I described above. I do not know why the keyboard looks skewed. The accurate depiction of the keyboard is in the screenshot above. As you can see the gestures take a little getting used to, but it becomes second nature after you use it. Here is a link to the Google Play Store for Fleksy.
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