TouchPal

[Guest Paul]

Welcome to 'Paul's App of the Day', where I pick one of my favourite apps as featured app of the day! Today's app is...

TouchPal

What they say

Chinese :angry:

What we say

Don't be fooled by the fact that this is listed as 'TouchPal Chinese Input' in the Market (and the description), this excellent input method has full support for English (sorry, no other languages at this time it seems) and is completely free of Chinese language when in use (just turn off the Chinese dictionaries in the application settings). I've been a big fan of TouchPal for a long time, so i'm excited to see it in the Market and FREE! The included skin is slightly ugly, but it makes up for this with handy features including QWERTY, 20 key and 12 key layouts that can be switched between by swiping horizontally on the keyboard, swipe up on a letter for upper case and swipe down on a letter to use the symbol from that key (soooo useful!).

I hope we'll see a full multi language release on the Market at some point, however TouchPal's primary business model is via OEMs (TouchPal is bundled on Huawei devices for example), so it's unclear at this point when / if that will happen.

Permissions

INTERNET / READ_CONTACTS / VIBRATE

Download

View TouchPal at AppBrain

QRcode

To use, install 'Barcode Scanner' from the Android Market.



Price

FREE (We like that! ;))

Market star rating at time of writing

4.39 (377 ratings)

Version at time of writing

4.2

Similar / Alternative apps

There are many alternative input methods on the market, including Smart Keyboard, Better Keyboard and SwiftKey (amongst many others).

Suggested improvements for the next version

I would like to see a full release with support for more languages but most importantly a prettier stock skin and theming support.

Have your say

Fan of TouchPal? Found something better? Just wanna share your experiences? Post below! :D

[Guest Specialist79]

Permissions

INTERNET / READ_CONTACTS / VIBRATE

I would be very cautious installing an IME with INTERNET privileges. In theory, it could phone home with all all your typed data (including passwords).

[Guest goatee]

I loved Touchpal when I had the Pulse. Now I've had Swype for months, and a day or two of Swiftkey, I'm eager to see if it's as good as I remember (used to love the qwerty keyboard with two letters per key).

Edit: Oh, it really is as good as I remember. Thank you Cootek! This is the best keyboard - perhaps not quite as fast as Swype for normal words, but for anything not in the dictionary, and for emoticons, this wins hands down. And the additional cut/paste buttons rock :angry:.

Edited July 19, 2010 by goatee

[Guest Paul]

I would be very cautious installing an IME with INTERNET privileges. In theory, it could phone home with all all your typed data (including passwords).

It uses it's Internet permissions to check for updates.

P

[Guest zigzagindex]

It uses it's Internet permissions to check for updates.

P

Thanks, it works like a charm, better than Baidu.

[Guest siimo]

how do i get this to work on the Desire rom for nexus one, i cant hold down to select input method like on the stock froyo rom :angry:

[Guest Paul]

You need to enable the input method in settings!

P

[Guest siimo]

Thanks Paul will give that a try :(

[Guest hazi1964]

Thanks Paul will give that a try :(

If I hadn't read this thread, I would still be stuck with Qwerty. Loving this keypad. Thanks for posting it here. I'd never have downloaded it cos of the chinese language thing, wouldn't have realised it was English. rofl.

Alison

[Guest Entreated]

The latest update (todays) for TouchPal makes this the best keyboard out there.

The main part of the update for me is that the skin has been improved 110% and is far more better to look at rather than the basic theme before.

And an advantage for the update is that is makes accessing various other menus easier than before as well.

[Guest Paul]

Agreed, TouchPal got a MUCH nicer look with the new update downloaded from within the app settings.

P

[Guest]

Does Touchpal have a # key? I twitter a fair amount from my phone and it's fairly important to me as a result.

[Guest Paul]

Accessible by pressing the symbols button...

P

[Guest skinnypupp]

I loved TouchPal on WinMo, but this version just doesn't feel quite as good. Also being able to skin it was REALLY nice, as there were actually some nice skins on XDA (I know)

Also, having no auto-space after word completion REALLY sucks

Edited August 2, 2010 by skinnypupp

[Guest]

Very nice. Always liked it on my Omnia, and this feels just as good now

[Guest]

Accessible by pressing the symbols button...

P

It took me forever to realise the symbol page scrolls. D'oh, thanks. :-)