Erick Schonfeld, the reporter who conducted the interview, touched on the music app (which was replaced by Spotify), Facebook, more Facebook, and some more Facebook, but failed to mention the story behind the keyboard in this upcoming social hub of a phone.
Considering the Cloud Touch is heavily typing oriented, I think it’s pretty important to mention the technology used in the keyboard created specifically for this device by INQ. In fact, if you have ever tried SwiftKey, you should already be familiar with the Fluency engine, which powers SwiftKey’s predictions.
TouchType, the company behind SwiftKey and Fluency, hasn’t been sitting idle. While teasing us with all kinds of tablet versions of its primary product, they’ve also been secretly making deals and pushing the core technology to various companies. Looks like their efforts paid off.
In a statement to Android Police, TouchType said:
We are very excited to have partnered with INQ to bring this about, as it means more and more people will be getting access to the technology we’ve spent such a long time working on!
It also means the Cloud Touch is probably the best social messaging phone hitting the market this year.
- This is INQ’s own keyboard, that we developed in partnership with them; we did most of the engineering, but it’s not SwiftKey, or a stock, it’s "INQ Keyboard". It functions differently to SwiftKey, and is the phone’s stock.
- They licensed the prediction engine from us, as well as our consultancy in building the keyboard.
If you’d like to give SwiftKey a go to see what all the fuss is about, hit up this QR code or scan it with your favorite barcode scanner:
Congratulations, TouchType! (Now can we get some arrow keys on the regular keyboard?)