One of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean biggest new features – other than the vastly smoother user interface, significantly improved voice actions, more powerful notifications, offline voice typing – is the new predictive keyboard. Just like the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, the new keyboard has been ported to older versions of Android for everyone to use. Check it out after the jump.
The port is developed by the folks over at Beansoft, famously known for ICS Browser+. It is based on the recently pushed version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to AOSP.
Because of the severely short development time, Jelly Bean Keyboard is currently in its first and alpha state. This means there are going to be issues with it. The developer has written these down under the description over on Google Play: full word prediction and auto correction for missing spaces is only supported for English*, user dictionary doesn’t work currently so you can’t add your own words, and only English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian are supported. Missing features will be brought back in ensuing updates.
We’ve been following users reviews and general feedback on the Jelly Bean keyboard, and so far we’ve only seen positive comments so far, which is obviously a good thing for an app which is in its alpha stage. Predictions are top notch though not as accurate as SwiftKey**. Some users are even reporting improved text input over the default Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard.
Jelly Bean Keyboard is a free app and it can be installed from Google Play from the link embedded below. It only works on Android smartphones on Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich or above.
Download Jelly Bean Keyboard [Google Play link]
Don’t forget to let us know what you think of Jelly Bean Keyboard by leaving a comment over on our Facebook and Google+ page. Are the predictions as accurate as you expected? Is it better than our current favorite ICS keyboard? Is it worth spending the money to get SwiftKey?
*Normal prediction still works for now
**SwiftKey is more accurate because it can scan your text messages, Facebook and Twitter profiles for words you commonly use.
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