Microsoft Releases Swiftmoji Keyboard App for Android and iPhone

Microsoft’s SwiftKey this week launched a new Swiftmoji keyboard app for both Android and iPhone that delivers emoji-predicting capabilities. That is, it offers emoji suggestions based on what you just typed and your emoji preferences.

(Mine would be “no emojis.” Moving on.)

While the strange advances sweeping through the messaging world right now might be off-putting to people who, say, like to get work done, they’re big business: Messaging is evolving into a platform of its own—what Microsoft calls “conversations as a platform”—and this platform supports such niceties as emojis, “stickers,” and various full-screen experiences that help really personalize the experience. Plus of course more advanced capabilities via messaging bots.

Based on the most cursory of examinations—sorry, I can’t bring myself to actually install this thing on one of my own phones—it appears that Swiftmoji tries to achieve the same goal as Apple’s new Messaging app in iOS 10, at least when it comes to emojis, by suggesting emojis as you type. For example, as you start to type the word “pizza” in iOS 10’s Messaging app, the keyboard suggests a pizza emoji.

According to the Swiftmoji web site, this new keyboard app works a little bit differently on Android and iPhone, and I suspect that those differences can be tied directly to Apple’s strict control of its own platform. That is, on iPhone, you need to manually switch to the Swiftmoji keyboard layout using that stupid iOS globe icon, whereas on Android, the Swiftmoji features are always visible and available. In either case, the keyboard will predict and suggest emojis.

Anyway.

Microsoft purchased Swiftkey, which makes what is widely regarded as the best mobile keyboard app, back in February. The company’s SwiftKey keyboard claims 300 million users, and Microsoft said at the time that it would “explore scenarios for the integration of the core [SwiftKey] technology across the breadth of Microsoft’s product and services portfolio.” Many are curious when or if SwitfKey capabilities will ever come to the Windows 10 software keyboard in particular.

You can download Swiftmoji for Android from the Google Play Store. The version for iPhone is available from the Apple App Store.