Swiftkey 3 leaves Beta, now available at a 50% discount

Swiftkey 3, the brilliant software keyboard for Android, has now left Beta and is available in the Google Play Store with a 50% discount to $1.99 / £1.49 / €1.99 for a limited time.

The update has been in a Beta phase via Swiftkey's innovative 65,000 member strong VIP programme allowing the company to test, tweak and fix the product with a large audience. Version 3 brings a number of improvements, including:

• Updated themes including an ICS style 'Holo' theme and the new 'Cobalt' default theme
  
• Smart Space –  automatically detect mistyped or omitted spaces across strings of sloppily typed words in real-time
  
• Enhanced UI – a much larger space bar and smart punctuation key help improve accuracy and make it quick and easy to access common punctuation
  
• Additional languages – SwiftKey 3 now offers support for an additional seven languages, bringing the total up to 42

When I first tried the Beta, I have to confess I didn't really like it as Swiftkey had changed the punctuation input to share a single key. Thankfully, through user feedback and multiple Beta iterations the application is refined (now with a dedicated comma key and re-arranged punctuation list) to the point where I've fallen in love with it again.

As well as adding new features, version 3 fixes a few niggling issues i'd had with the previous version (inputting text in the Chrom Omnibox for example).

Swiftkey is available now for both Phones and Tablets and is a free upgrade for existing users.

Thanks to Randall Munroe of xkcd.com