Crimson Keyboard App (iOS): A Light Typing Alternative

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Crimson Keyboard App (iOS): A Light Typing Alternative

I still haven’t gotten used to the iPhone 6. No, not the Plus; even the regular iPhone 6 can be a bit unwieldly at times. As smartphone sizes continue to grow, my hands stay at roughly the same size. As a result, I find it tougher to type consistently without errors, and as I keep upgrading devices, I have to essentially re-learn everything. I’ve been using Crimson, a new typing app, for over a week now, and it’s made the switch a bit easier in terms of my acclimation.

Crimson employs a “swipe” design, so that all you have to do is type something, then swipe up to instantly queue up a word and insert an automatic space. The engine is powered by a system called “Adaptxt,” which predicts phrases and eventually learns your idiosyncrasies. While I haven’t been blown away by the adaptive nature in terms of a personal touch, the prediction functionality works as advertised.

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The setup is simple, and thankfully doesn’t require registration of any kind. You just go into your keyboard settings and give it full access. To use Crimson, you can press the little globe icon while typing anything on your device—super easy and non-invasive. I was pretty happy with how little or often I could use the service. If all else fails, you can just not swipe and use it as a regular keyboard (it basically looks like the native UI), but the five color options for Crimson help spice up the vanilla experience.

The major problem with Crimson is that it doesn’t have any advanced or extended features—what you see is basically what you get. Although the predictions are helpful, they are best suited for shorter, more conversational-centric dialog.

Hopefully Crimson as a keyboard platform will continue to grow and add new bells and whistles to justify its cost. For now, I’m enjoying the idea of casually switching over to the optional system whenever I write texts and take shorthand notes.

Crimson Keyboard is an iOS app that can be downloaded for $1.99 in the iTunes App Store.

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