We know that you’re trying to get Android 4.4 Kitkat as soon as you possibly can, but till then you can make do with many of the new features available, provided you’re willing to update them yourself. Today we’ve got for you a review of the Android 4.4 Kitkat keyboard, which is no longer called the Android Keyboard but the Google Keyboard.
Apart from the name change, the keyboard has undergone a shift to the white. Hence, all that was blue earlier has become white. We’re not sure if those using themes will be able to change it to their favorite color, but as of now its all in that color. This includes the long-press options, the suggestions and of course the swipe trail.
The swipe itself has been improved, with there being addition of an option to add space by simply swiping over it while typing out a sentence. This helps when you’re typing out a long sentence and need to break it up. However, there is as yet no support for numbers being included via swipe.
Finally, emoji icons have been added, and can be accessed via the bottom right button. This feature was available in some apps already (limited to a smileys popup only though), but the new emoji panels offer a large range of many pre-installed smiley combinations, as well as some special characters. These will appear in white till you get the Android 4.4 Kitkat
Finally there are some changes to the numerals and characters tabs which aren’t quite very helpful since they reduce the space for, well, the space button.
The only catch in this is that it is supported by Ice Cream Sandwich and above, since Google made some major modifications to the keyboard when moving to Android 4.0.x. However, if you do have the required OS, you can simply update the existing keyboard. However, you will have to have the External Sources button ticked in Security since this app is not native to your Android system as yet.