Swype BETA Rolls Out First OTA Update

I’m sure by now you are familiar with, or have at least heard of, Swype, an alternative keyboard for mobile devices. Last month, Swype announced that they would be initiating an OTA automatic update system for their Swype BETA app, replacing the need to uninstall older versions when receiving an update. Today, the very first OTA update rolled out, version 3.26, and should reach all devices within 72 hours from launch.

Within the update, BETA users will notice a new “Context Prediction Engine”, a form of prediction unlike that of SwiftKey and is best described by Swype themselves:

“Our context prediction engine is providing improved accuracy to words that you enter by Swyping. We aren’t doing any type of ‘completion’ or ‘next word prediction,’ only improving the accuracy of the words Swype offers to match the path the user traced.”

Another new feature is added support for Japanese language (kana-kanji conversion), and is only available in the pan-Asia language package. The OTA update will also bring a host of bug fixes which is always nice in any update.

If you are a user of Swype BETA and haven’t yet received the 3.26 update be patient, Swype says it can take up to 72 hours for the update to fully roll out to all devices.