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December 13, 2013

Can Fleksy Be The iOS Keyboard That Everyone Needs?

Sure, we've heard of keyboards for iOS devices before. There's the touchscreen version, which is less than satisfying for many users. There are exterior versions, like the one that Ryan Seacrest is partially backing in the form of the Typo Keyboard. But there's a new keyboard in town in the form of Fleksy, a keyboard that asks a critical question: can an on-screen touch keyboard be better than the one Apple itself developed? The answer, oddly enough, may be yes.

There's a story that goes back to 2007, back when the iPhone was just getting started. Users were interested in an easy way to perform cut and paste functions of the same kind that most every word processing program would do easily, but there wasn't a way to do with with the iPhone. That's when OpenClip arrived in 2008, offering users a sort of “scratch pad” to allow text to move from one app to another, and all that needed to happen was for developers to add OpenClip to apps. It didn't happen in large numbers and in 2009, Apple added cut and paste systems to its own operations, and that rendered OpenClip mostly useless.

Now, Fleksy is out to provide the service that Apple can't or won't just yet, and it's even offered up a complete kit that allows other developers to add the Fleksy keyboard to current apps, much in the way that OpenClip did back in 2008. Adding Fleksy's keyboard requires just one line of code, at last report, and once it's in, it will offer a different kind of keyboard thanks to some critical new features. The Fleksy keyboard is said to be specifically geared toward large-scale users and those whose vision isn't the greatest, allowing users to put together a combination of gestures and touch-typing to work the keyboard. A thumb swipe, for example, makes spaces between the words, and suggested words emerge for use with the thumb to further speed up typing.

There are potential downsides to Fleksy's plan, however, perhaps first among these is that such an approach has already been taken by OpenClip, and it didn't quite go off. But moreover, reports suggest that Fleksy isn't exactly clear on how its keyboard should be offered, whether it should be offered at no charge or as an in-app purchase, which means users may ultimately—depending on how the app makers treat Fleksy—have to pay several times to get a Fleksy keyboard on various applications. More recently, however, Fleksy offered up its services on Android for a free trial, and over 100,000 users so far have downloaded the app, having to pay $3.99 later to keep it. With competitors in the field like TouchPal, Swiftkey and of course Swype, that leaves a fractured release strategy likely to be sub-optimal.

Many users seem to approve of Fleksy, and that may give this company just the leverage it needs to keep up and running in this particular field. If it can get the leverage that OpenClip didn't, it may well have a real solution to Apple's own keyboard on its hands. But with the sheer number of competitors afoot, it's likely to be a tougher sell than even Fleksy may expect. Only time will tell if we're looking at the newest default keyboard, or another flash in the pan.




Edited by Cassandra Tucker


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