Ever wish you could:

Well, now you can! The Flicboard is a touch screen keyboard app that gives you the ability to type at up to 45 words per minute without having to glance down at the keys. It's a fast Android keyboard that runs on most smartphones and tablets. Eyes free operation makes it possible to easily compose emails, send texts, or take notes while in a meeting or classroom or while with friends. The combination of speed and eyes-free operation makes the type of serious work, normally done on a laptop or desktop, possible on your smartphone or tablet .

Rather than tapping on tiny keys, the FlicBoard uses gestures to compose text. These gestures are simple to do and easy to learn. A few simple one finger gestures, consisting of taps and swipes, are used in combination with one, two or three fingers to allow a unique gesture for each character or shift to be entered  (see video). More information on true gesture typing can be found here.

Of course these gestures, as with the key positions in touch typing, must be learned. To aid in the learning process, the FlicBoard displays a table under your fingers that tells you how to make the correct gesture (see the figure below). Later, after the gestures have been learned, it can be used as a look-up for more obscure characters and punctuation. Eyes free operation is possible because you don't have to accurately touch a specific area on the screen. The fingers need only fall within the active area of the keyboard app to be recognized. Once the gestures are learned, text can be entered very quickly without even looking at the screen.

The fact that the swipes can be as short as a few millimeters along with no need for eye-hand coordination, makes the FlicBoard one of the fastest touchscreen keyboards. Thus far the FlicBoard has been demonstrated at up to 45 words per minute (with auto word completion turned off). Higher speeds are entirely possible.

How it Works

The FlicBoard uses one, two or three fingers of one hand to form a character and can be used with either the right or left hand. When more than one finger is used, all the fingers make the same gesture making the multi-finger gestures easy to perform. The gestures consist of taps and simple swipes. For example swiping one finger down enters the letter "o", while simultaneously swiping the index and middle finger down together, enters the letter "s". Swiping all three fingers down enters a "d". Again notice that, with any of these gestures, the fingers can be anywhere within the active area of the FlicBoard and be recognized. A simple "calibration gesture" where all three fingers are swiped up and then down, registers the orientation of the hand so the FlicBoard can be used in various positions.
Img
As mentioned above, the gestures are made on top of a table that shows you how to form them, as shown to the right. To the right of each character in the table, a row of symbols shows how the corresponding gesture is formed. A filled circle means that the corresponding finger is tapped while arrow symbols mean it is swiped in the direction(s) indicated. For example the letter "e", e table entry, is entered by simultaneously tapping two adjacent fingers while the letter "s", s table entry, is entered by swiping the same two fingers down. Some swipes are curved, in that they start in one of the directions and end in another. For example the letter "m", m table
          entry, is entered by swiping one finger down and to the right. The hyphen symbol means that the corresponding finger does not touch the screen e.g. the letter "k",  k, is entered by simultaneously swiping the index and ring fingers to the left while the middle finger remains raised.

The FlicBoard has two shifts. One for upper case characters and one for numbers. These shifts also allow the entry of all the special symbols normally available on a standard "qwerty" keyboard.

So why not give it a try! The FlicBoard is the best touch screen keyboard app those who want to get the most out of their tablet or phone.  The FlicBoard can be installed using the link below. It works on almost all phones and tablets using Android 2.2 or later that support at least three finger multi-touch.