Teksoft Fingertouch Keyboard was the first application that I ever reviewed, and I liked it so much, that until recently it has been my default SIP [software input program]. So what would make me change that? Teksoft have just released version 2.0, or Fingertouch Pro, and you know I’m gonna get me some of that action right.

In the initial news post I did about Fingertouch Pro I included a video from the dedicated Fingertouch website. It showed some pretty fast text input on a touch screen, using fT9 technology that most of us would be familiar with from mobile phones. Obviously that piqued my interest. Having tried most of the new  entries into the SIP wars over the last year, I was pleasantly surprised to find Teksoft hadn’t tried to emulate the SIP from that fruity phone, but had added to their already great application.

So how does it work? and will I keep it? you’ll have to read on…

So Fingertouch Pro still offers five different keyboard layouts, as did the original, and not a lot has changed there. Although Teksoft have included a few more skins in the original .cab file, which accounts for the installation size almost doubling with Pro. Most of the changes are in the back end of the program though, the configuration options have tripled, with a couple of surprising twists that I wouldn’t have thought of. More on that later.

Straight up the comparison between the old and the new is visible, the first keyboard is larger, and the default skin has changed a little bit. Fingertouch offers support for quite a few languages, and during install you get to choose a primary and secondary language, I chose french, even though I have no Idea how to speak it or write it.

Keyboard 2

Keyboard 3

Keyboard 4

Keyboard 5

So Firstly we have a traditional Qwerty style keyboard. The Second keyboard  is an interesting layout, that changes as you type, using predictive technology to change the keyboard layout based on most used combinations of letters in the language of your choice. The Third layout is much like the keyboard on your mobile phone. The Fourth is the calculator. The Fifth, the big keyboard, is much like something you would see on a Blackberry device, that uses t9 technology.

I have to say I like the default look of Fingertouch, and out of all of the above keyboards, there is only one that confounds me, and this continues from the first time I looked at the app. The Second keyboard with it’s changing layout is really hard to get used to, and frustrating, you are always looking for the letter you want.

One other gripe, even though the Fifth keyboard uses the fT9 technology, it has to learn words. In saying that, I mean it doesn’t seem to tap into the Windows Mobile word completion dictionary, but is building it’s own database of words. That means until you add the words you most commonly use, you get a prompt to add words, which overrides the T9 tech, and unless you use the keyboard a lot, it will take a fair bit of time to develop a dictionary.

Settings/Options

I mentioned earlier that the bulk of this update was behind the scenes, or interface, and I’ll show you some of that know.

One of the most impressive things is the inclusion of “drag and drop” for resizing the  keyboard, or customising the keyboards. You can actually change the keyboard layouts at your leisure. For this I’ll include a video from Teksoft

Not to just use the video, here is the stretched version of the keyboard on my device, it does work.

It works well, as does the option to drag and drop certain keys where you want to, a funny thing happened to me though. I was playing with the drag and drop keys and it was getting late, so I thought I’d put things on hold for the night. So I went and reset the default settings thinking it would restore the keyboard, big mistake. If you change the keyboards around with the drag and drop option they stay that way. Luckily I’m familiar enough with the layout to drag and drop it back to the original.

For the sake of not rambling too much, the options include Theme, self explanatory,

Gestures, self explanatory,

Ultra Keyboard, which was also included in version 1, allows you to enable a range of functions to a keyboard sequence. As you can see I enabled the inbuilt screen capture, with a sequence “!22″.

Great to have keyboard shortcuts that you can customise, and if you look at the  two screenshots above, one take with Ilium screenshot and the other taken with Fingertouch Pro, the quality is great.

There’s a magnifier solution that is similair to ZoomBoard, but it’s customisable, you can change the position of where it appears, as you can with the fT9 pop ups as well. I found I couldn’t get a screenshot of the magnifier though. Suffice it to say that you get pretty much the same usability as you do in ZoomBoard, if you hit the wrong key you can slide to the right  key and the magnifier will show you when you get there.

The last of the settings I’ll mention is the fT9 options.

I suppose you can imagine the way T9 tech works, it takes a random selection of input, from keys that offer more than one option for input, and tries to match that varied input to known words. The T9 here is aimed at the Fast keyboard, [keyboard 5] and allows you as many options of word combinations that you may want from your random input.

What Do I Really Think?

To say I liked Fingertouch already would not be a lie, to say I think Teksoft have intelligently added features that others have been trying to add would not be a lie. What I liked about Fingertouch in the first place was what it did, it did well, and that was one thing, text input. Now they have added a whole heap of new features whilst preserving the interface, not trying to make an iPhone SIP for WinMo, and it works. Well.

The fact that the Pro version is slightly less responsive, because of size and intricacy, I can live with.

In the end I’m tied to the QWERTY keyboard and the default settings suit me. Using the fast keyboard, and fingers doesn’t suit my PDA use, but it works really well, and the T9 tech, once trained is a productivity boon. I still recommend this to anyone that wants a new input option, I love it.

Who knew it I’m a stylus guy I guess

Fingertouch Pro is available from Teksoft for Only 14.95 EUR (24.95 USD)!

Related posts:

1. Teksoft FingerTouch Pro… Update
2. Teksoft Releases The New FingerTouch Software Keyboard
3. Update: Teksoft BlueInput 1.5
4. Teksoft Releases Update to SpeedBooster
5. Review: Teksoft AirWizard