iOS Keyboard: Word Flow Being Beta Tested For The iPhone By Microsoft

Microsoft is planning on bringing the Word Flow keyboard, which some call the best smartphone keyboard in the world, to iOS devices, and have just opened up a beta program for the iPhone 5s or later.

The news comes courtesy of Thurrot, who noticed that Windows Insider member Kyle Reddoch posted a screenshot of the email Microsoft sent him on Twitter. According to that email, while iOS devices will be getting the Word Flow keyboard first, Microsoft is planning on rolling Word Flow out to Android devices as well.

What is interesting is that Microsoft has decided to spend their development time bringing the Word Flow keyboard to iOS and Android, while their desktop environments running Windows 10, like the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 or the Microsoft Surface Book, still lack the Word Flow keyboard.

The Word Flow keyboard got some upgrades from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile, including the ability to be dynamically resized and moved around the screen for optimal placement. The Word Flow keyboard was originally released with the Windows Phone 8.1.

Word Flow has long been hyped up to be one of the best mobile smartphone keyboards out there, and was even used to break the Guinness World Record for fastest texting in 2014. Unfortunately for Microsoft and their texter, Gaurav Sharma, Syntellia, its Fleksy keyboard and their texter Marcel Fernandes Filho beat them by 0.25 seconds only 4 months later.

The phrase world texting competitors have to type out, by the way? “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”

It’s amazing how quickly you can say that.

If waiting for Word Flow’s release isn’t your style, another swiping-based mobile keyboard alternative is SwiftKey, which is available for both Android and iOS.