Five years of owning smartphones has conditioned our thumbs to navigate tiny virtual keyboards with speed and precision. Yet an increasing number of voice dictation apps are making it easier than ever to communicate not with our thumbs, but with our voices. In effect, they’re bringing phones full circle, returning voice to the forefront. The latest example of such an app is TalkType, an Android keyboard.
What separates TalkType from the myriad other smartphone keyboards out there is that its users aren’t greeted with a QWERTY typing pad, but rather a round microphone icon. Tapping this microphone triggers a “Speak now” prompt, indicating that the app is listening for input. As is the case with many other voice dictation capabilities, users will see the text field fill with words as they speak. Of course, many smartphones have long offered voice dictation on their default keyboards. But Baidu’s app puts the feature front and center, a striking change from most smartphone keyboards.
Especially useful is that TalkType’s keyboard turns into a trackpad when editing text. Rather than trying to place the cursor in a precise spot in a line of text, users can swipe their fingers across the keyboard area to move between letters and words more easily. Apple users with an iPhone 6s or newer can perform a similar maneuver using 3D Touch on the iPhone’s built-in keyboard.
