Swype Beta updated, now includes Dragon Dictation
If your HTC EVO is rooted, then there's yet another reason to consider dumping the pre-installed Swype and signing up for the beta program. Along with the ability to receive updates, manage your custom dictionary, and not switch to Spanish if you accidentally miss the spacebar, you can now have Nuance's Dragon Dictate voice-to-text translation software.
While other replacement keyboards such as Nuance's FlexT9 have Dragon Dictate engine built in, Swype still reigns supreme at word prediction and learning your typing style. As voice-to-text goes, Dragon's engine can understand me amazingly well, which can't be said of Google's voice-to-text.
To uninstall your current version of Swype, first make a Nandroid backup in case anything goes wrong. You'll need Titatnium Backup (or an app with similar uninstall abilities) to force uninstall the system Swype application. Additionally you'll need to delete a file named libSwypeCore(something), which may exist in any number of directories on your EVO, depending on ROM and phone.
I've personally found it easiest to use terminal emulator to locate the file by typing "su" (for superuser) and then "find -iname libSwype*" to locate it. You can remove via command line there, or use a root file explorer to rename or delete the thing.
Once that's done, download and install the beta at beta.swype.com. You'll need to sign up for the beta program, which will take about two minutes. Run the installer, choose your language, and voila. The world's best keyboard got better.
If Swype dies after the first reboot, just uninstall via menu > settings > manage applications, and then reinstall and it will stick for good. I'm not sure if it was just my ROM or what, but I had that happen a couple of times I installed.
I've used the new version for about a week now on my EVO 4G and EVO 3D, and my text input experience has gone from frustrating to quite usable again. The beta version allowing you to edit and save the personal dictionary is a long, long, long overlooked feature.
Happy Swyping!
[AndroidGuys]
