Downloadable Text suggestions in Windows Phone 8
Here is something we clearly missed yesterday but reader black_lion picked up. In the video we showed of some brave souls using forks (yes, the utensil kind) to navigate their Lumia 920s, a little notification popped up that raises some eyebrows: Text Suggestions.
The dialog simply states "You are missing text suggestions for this keyboard. You can download them now or visiting Settings > Keyboard to do this later."
So what does that mean, exactly? We've heard that Windows Phone 8 will feature downloadable keyboards for different languages, meaning devices will no longer be restricted to whatever is "baked in" to the OS.
Text suggestions are optional under Settings, but the database needed with them presumably may not be downloaded with the keyboard itself (perhaps to save time or data). In turn, it looks like the OS gives you the option to later download these suggestions, if needed.
It also implies that Microsoft could add words and refine text suggestions whenever they want as once again, it's not baked into the OS.
Edit: To our knowledge, third party keyboards are still not allowed on Windows Phone 8. The ability to download new ones is strictly related to language-type.
Groundbreaking? Definitely not. Useful for many people out there? We bet.
Reader comments
Windows Phone 8 to offer downloadable Text Suggestions
Oh good! In Australia I can finally have a US keyboard with English spelling :) I hate having to switch to a UK keyboard to have correct spelling. Of course, having an Australian keyboard option would be even better!
I have the 920 and I've installed the Thai keyboard. It doesn't seem to have the option to enable suggestions. I'm very dissappointed especially because I found a page which MSFT says Thai keyboard does have suggestions. hmmm
Maybe it means its not a final build of the OS being shown.
I want to be free to use the keyboard that I want! I'm going back to Android.
Big mistake.
Yes but I don't want an app to force me to use a keyboard I don't want to use.
I think it's pretty cool to be able to change the font... I saw someone do it on an iphone
i'll skip
I cant understand you guys!!! WP8 is far from finished. There are so many things missing in the OS. They better fix those befor i buy the LM920
Does anybody know if WP8 can use 2 keyboard languages at the same time? Because I frequently use Dutch mixed with English words and right now (on WP7.5) it's annoying because I can either use Dutch or English auto correct. I can turn it off, but that's not ideal for me. I really, really hope WP8 has this feature...
That does not sound like a feature that would even have the posibility to be built. You want a "Prophecy" dictionary...that knows what words you use from a completely different language. You would have to teach it each word, one by one, and you can already do that.
Actually, BB10 does this.
Actually, BB10 does this.
WP7 has autocorrect in multiple languages already. The trick is to enable multiple keyboards and use the button next to the space bar to switch between them
Wow this is awesome
Wp8 is rocking with its features I'm gonna pick 820 when they are available in stores
Well I'm really excited about the WP8 OS. It doesn't matter to me whether i get a HTC 8x or 8s, or a Nokia Lumia 920 or 820. I'll get the phone that will fit my budget.
I believe a text suggestion popped up during Joe Belfiore's presentation at the Nokia Lumia 820/920 announcement. It's around the 37:07 mark when he's typing in a message to go with a WP8 start screen screenshot being uploaded to Twitter. The word "screenshot" pops up before he's even typed it. So, there you go. It's not exactly a WOW feature but still very handy ;)
DANIEL, i have a question that could perhaps un-confuse me. in the SDK does it show those settings under keyboard (the ones that the picture is saying to go to)? if not then here we have a little minimal feature that IS NOT showing in the SDK.
so that would have me leaning more towards the final features not being all shown. right ? righttt??
All I know is my vocabulary will be off da chain. I can speak ghett0 fAbul0us 4ll dai.
I love to curse! I mean they don't even allow you to save the cuss word either.. Let me cuss freely! Ha!
True.
Has anyone heard anything about the arc keyboard or is that something that's not coming
Now that office is online and tied to an account I'd like to see a universal text library per user.
Yeah, except I might want some words in my phones dictionary that I don't want to slip by at work... "Hey, how did the spell check not catch that you mistyped "duck" and "hunt"?"
But, what if I wanna tell my mistress I wanna f*ck her c*nt, and she thinks I wanna go on a duck hunt. That is much worse than your little work incident.
Its more so adding words in what I want.
That's cool. Although WP has the best keyboard ...
You're right. I love the Windows keyboard!
+1
Wow, the possibility of SWYPE and Windows Phone's predictive suggestions is EPIC! :)
I hate to be that guy but... Downloadable keyboards? Is Swype now a possibility?
No, definitely not. These are for languages...I'll clarify that.
I certainly hope WP8 has a better policy towards "profanity", because I use these words all the time in both English and Spanish and they never show up as suggestions when I misspell them. I don't see why Microsoft has to protect adults from this language.
Because swear corrections are ducking hilarious.
Lol
You can always add a word to your dictionary. Type the word you want to spell, hit space, and then tap it and it'll appear first in the suggestion list above the keyboard with a +in front of it. Tap that and it'll be added to your dictionary of suggestions.
I hate that sometimes I'll accidentally click on the misspelled word and it'll get added to the dictionary and there is currently no way to view the list of added words and remove individual ones, so you'll have to delete all custom words and bit by bit add them back in.
That doesn't work with profanity. It only works with words that WP considers to be mispelled or unknown. Profanity exists in the dictionary (type "fuck" and the phone won't try to correct you), but they are removed from the suggestions.
Have you noticed that even TellMe follows this policy. If you do speech-to-text using certain words it will transcribe them as $!@#%.
I never had any problem spelling swear words.
You are so ducking right. That shut annoys me.
wp8 is going to awesome...for many reasons!
+1