If you are anything like us, you have been waiting patiently for your chance to get your hands on the official build of ICS. In these trying times we will grasp at just about about anything that will keep us occupied until the big day hits. Fortunately , XDA member, for.digit, has given us a little somethin-somethin to keep us excited and recently released a free app in the Android Market containing ICS’ predictive keyboard. Now you too can have Google’s redesigned keyboard on your very own device without the need to root.
In case you missed Google’s ICS launch, the new keyboard has seen a visual face-lift and has better prediction capabilities. Now when you type, not only does it predict which word it is that you are trying to spell, it bases its prediction off of the surrounding words as well. If you are at all familiar with Swiftkey than you know exactly how this works. It will be interesting to see how the ICS keyboard stacks up against the competition and whether or not people will opt for a replacement keyboard instead.
They only downfall with using this app is that the keyboard’s voice input button doesn’t work, you will not be able to use the speech-to-text function. Another thing worth mentioning is that this download only works with phones not tablets, and since the package isn’t signed by Google it isn’t exactly official. To give the new ICS keyboard a try, hit one of the market download links below. Be aware that it requires Android 2.2 or higher and will more than likely have a few bugs. If you give it a try, let us know what you think in the comments.
UPDATE: The Market app has been updated and now supports voice to text! I tested it using fast speech and included multiple punctuation words and it passed with flying colors. I might go out on a limb and say it works better than most alternative keyboards that I have tried. I really suggest trying it out!
[via XDA]